LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Shelf ..«:&: 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






Ensilage of Greei Crops, 



FROM THE FRENCH OF AUGUSTE GOFFART. 



WITH THE 



LATEST FACTS CONNECTED WITH THIS SYSTEM. 



BY 



J. B. -BROWN 




PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK PLOW CO., 

55 Beekman Street, New York. 
1880. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the yeax 1880, 

By I. C. BROWN, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



^ 



STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 

TIIE NATIONAL PKIXTINU COMPANY, 
18, 18, 20 and 22 Chambers Street, 

NEW YORK. 



[From Monsieur Auguste Goff art's Manual.] 

Culture and Ensilage of Maize, 

AND OTHER GREEN FODDER, 



CHAPTER I. 



ADVANTAGES TO BE DERIVED FROM THE PRESERVATION 
OF GREEN FODDER BY ENSILAGE, OVER THE METHOD 
OF PRESERVATION BY DRYING. 

If there is one fact recognized by all agriculturists, it is 
that a certain quantity of grass, which, consumed in a green 
state represents an ascertained nutritive value, loses a consider- 
able portion of that value in passing into the state of hay in- 
tended for the winter sustenance of animals. 

The cow, which gives us in summer, while feeding on 
green grass, such excellent milk, and butter of such agreeable 
color and flavor, furnishes us. in winter, when she eats the 
same grass converted into hay, an inferior quality of milk, 
and pale, insipid butter. What modifications has this grass 
undergone in changing to hay? These modifications are 
numerous. It is sufficient to cross a meadow at the time when 
the new-mown grass is undergoing desiccation in order to 
recognize that it is losing an enormous quantity of its sub- 
stance that exhales in the air in agreeable odors, but which, 
if they remained in the plant, would serve as a condiment, fa- 
cilitating digestion and assimilation. 

All stock-raisers, those of Sologne especially, know how 
rapidly our young cattle increase in weight in summer on 
green pasture, which, converted into hay and devoted to their 



6 OULTUKE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 

nourishment in winter, scarcely keeps them in statu quo ; hay 
given judiciously does not always prevent them from becom- 
ing lean. 

Therefore the sole fact of desiccation accomplished by fine 
weather, in the best conditions, causes the loss of a consider- 
able part of essential substance. This loss, added to the 
physical modifications which render mastication and digestion 
of the hay more difficult than of the grass, and consequently 
assimilation less complete, merits the most serious attention 
on the part of those who are interested in agricultural affairs. 

The losses which I have mentioned are far from being all 
that result from our method of transforming grass into hay. 

Rains, ofttimes prolonged, coming upon the harvest, the 
absence of sufficient heat in autumn, are powerful causes of 
deterioration of hay. 

What agriculturist has not seen a hundred times his hay, 
injured by rain, deprived of its richest and most assimilative 
elements'? The rain prolonged, the hay is invaded by a species 
of nauseous rot, which disgusts cattle and causes formidable 
maladies when hunger forces them to eat it. If these things 
occur to the common fodder crops — clover, lucern, sainfoin, 
etc. — what would happen to the fodder crops of high growth 
and great yield, such as maize and sorgho? Never in our 
temperate climate could we obtain for these a sufficient desic- 
cation by the sun. 

These are the grave inconveniences which from time 
immemorial have induced agriculturists to seek some new 
method of preservation for then- fodder. It is nearly a century 
since the German, Klapmayer, called the attention of the agri- 
cultural world to his system of conversion of grass into hay, 
and which still bears his name — " Brown hay, Klapmayer 
method." This method, which made a great noise at the time 
of its appearance, has had its seasons of popularity. It has 
been successively taken up, abandoned, again taken up ; but 
it has in fact never been firmly implanted into agricultural 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 7 

practice. For my part, at the commencement of my agricul- 
tural career, more than thirty years ago, I pursued some expe- 
riments perseveringly through two campaigns, in which I fol- 
lowed faithfully the directions of Klapmayer. How many 
times have I arisen in the middle of the night, with one of my 
workmen, in order to satisfy myself, thermometer in hand, that 
my grass, gathered in cocks larger or smaller, did not exceed 
the degree of heat prescribed as the extreme limit to insure 
excellent preservation. I never succeeded, and I doubt if any 
other persons have been any more fortunate. 

A few years later I gave my attention to the culture of 
maize, and I began to seek for it a system of preservation 
by ensilage. I have therein entirely succeeded, but only after 
thousands of experiments, which have continued not less than 
a quarter of a century. It is that all agriculturists may 
profit by the experience acquired, often at my cost, upon this 
important subject, that I have written this Manual. 



LANDS SUITABLE TO THE PRODUCTION OF MAIZE. 

I do not pretend that all soil is adapted to a profitable 
culture of maize. There are certain indispensable conditions of 
the physical, hygrometric and chemical state of the soil, the 
absence of which will render impossible the profitable culture 
of this fodder crop ; but in most instances it will answer to in- 
crease, for the first two crops, the manuring and dressing, in 
order to obtain a large production, which will give a sort of 
impetus to the new culture, and will be the point of departure 
of a most happy transformation. As in a machine, however 
well constructed, it is necessary to overcome at first the force 
of inertia. 

Note. — A hectare is about 2%. acres. A kilogramme is about 2\ lb. avoirdupoise. 



8 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 

At Burtin rny soil possesses some qualities very favorable 
for this culture, but for four years my processes left much to 
be desired, and within two years I have made more progress 
than I had obtained during twenty years preceding. The 
large quantity of maize that the increase of this culture and 
my perfected processes have placed every year at my disposal 
has permitted me to double the number of my stock ; then 
each animal which formerly produced 13,000 kilogrammes of 
dung has produced, since it has been better nourished, nearly 
20,000 kilogrammes. Therefore, if my maize requires abund- 
ant manuring it causes a production of manure more than suf- 
ficient. In fact, a hectare of maize, properly treated and suc- 
cessfully preserved, yields a product of more that 50,000 kilo- 
orammes of manure, and absorbs hardly one-third of this quan- 
tity. It is necessary to add that each week I spread upon my 
dung-heaps 100 kilogrammes of phosphate. This practice 
gives excellent results, above all in Sologne, where our soil, 
naturally very poor in phosphoric acid, requires that we should 
furnish it in every possible form. Some foreboding people 
predicted four years ago that I would lose all my stock if I 
continued to feed them exclusively on maize throughout the 
year. I have continued to do so, and all my animals enjoy 
excellent health, without even a shadow of a malady. One of 
the most valuable properties of maize is the power of self suc- 
cession almost indefinite. Some of my finest maize occupies 
a field which, during the past eighteen years, has borne 
fourteen harvests of that plant without giving any signs of 
weariness ; on the contrary, the later yield is better than the 
former. All the requirement is to give to the land suitable 
manuring, restoring each year the equivalent of that which is 
taken off. Potash is the predominating component of maize. 
Animals consuming it assimilate very little potash, and the 
dung-heap restores to the soil nearly all of it that has been 
removed in the crop. Another plant, much cultivated in So- 
logne, the hemp, possesses also the property of eternalizing 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 9 

itself upon the same field. Each farm has its hemp field, 
which, for centuries, occupies the same ground. 

The soil which is best adapted to the culture of maize is 
of medium consistency, rather light than heavy, moist without 
being wet, rich in alluvial matter, and therefore of a dark 
color. It is remarkable that our poor Sologne possesses an 
abundance of this kind of land, as if Heaven had wished to 
give it some sort of compensation for all its other inferiorities. 
Heavy soil is equally well adapted to produce very fine maize, 
but requires more labor; for it is necessary to bring it to a 
state of fine pulverization, at the risk of the seed not sprouting, 
which is always difficult in compact earth. In general terms, 
maize will succeed wherever beets do well, with the same 
conditions as to manuring and top-dressing. But maize can- 
not, of course, have the pretension to compete with advantage 
against such a rival ; above all, in the rich countries where 
for so long a time it has been cultivated as a plant that is both 
valuable in commerce (sugar) and for fodder. In those parts 
maize can only make for itself a modest place, as a means of 
varying a little the food of our animals. 

But in those countries, such as the South of France and 
Algeria, where the excessive heat causes the beet to fail, there 
maize will render immense service. Preserved by ensilage, it 
will assure at all times to the cattle sufficient food, instead of 
those alternations of abundance and scarcity which often have 
such sorrowful results. 



10 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 



METHODS OF CULTURE. 

Formerly I planted my maize in ridges, which has been 
the sole method practiced for a long time in the fields of our 
Sologne. The ridge in shallow soil but little dug up is an 
excellent method for protecting the fall seeding against the 
wet, so destructive in winter. But as a spring crop it is neces- 
sary to give up the ridges entirely, and to replace them by 
beds more or less extensive. These, by yielding less evapo- 
ration, provide better than the ridge against the dryness of 
summer.. Another motive, more serious, pleads also in favor 
of beds. When well compressed by a heavy roller, they pro- 
tect the seed, more effectually than the ridge, against one of 
the most to be dreaded plagues of this culture. At the mo- 
ment when the little shoot makes its appearance out of the 
earth, the birds come in crowds, in order to pull up and eat the 
grain which adheres to and comes out of the soil with it, 
especially when the soil is light, as it commonly is in Sologne. 
I have lost several times a third, and sometimes a half, of my 
maize, devoured thus at the birth, by crows, pies, and pigeons, 
which swarm in our fields. A good rolling of my beds with a 
heavy stone roller is an effective preservative against the 
danger which I have mentioned. When the earth has been 
well jacked down by the roller, the bird that pulls up the 
shoot of maize finds that it breaks off near the ground without 
being followed by the grain, which is all that has any value 
to him. Deceived in his hope, the bird gives up very quickly 
an ungrateful labor which refuses him the reward upon which 
he had reckoned. Besides this, the roller is an instrument of 
security for our light soil. It strengthens the hold of the 
plant upon the soil, and it has saved, twenty times, my crops 
that were in danger by being laid bare. 

The use of the seeding machine is the surest and least 

Note. — For Iron Rollers, see List. 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 11 

costly method. It economizes the seed, which often costs so 
dear, and it gives regular and equal lines, which render the 
after cultivation very easy. For want of a machine, I have 
obtained very good results in distributing the seed by hand, 
by women, who follow the laborer and only put the seed in 
every second furrow. I obtained thus wider rows, but regu- 
larly spaced and easily cultivated. 

Note. — The translator supposes that the gang-plow is used in this case. The 
French plow of this kind excelled even our American plows at the Paris Exposition, 
and is to be introduced into this country. The remainder of this chapter is de- 
voted to comparison between drilled and broadcast sowing, which is omitted as 
valueless to the American farmer. The mechanical genius of the United States and 
Canada, fostered by the Patent Office and rewarded by the immense demand for its 
results, has settled this question to the great relief of the arms and backs of the 
laborers. 



YIELD OF MAIZE. 



Thanks to the care that I have specified, I obtain from 
my maize an enormous yield. In the past five years the 
minimum has been 75,000 kilogrammes per hectare, and the 
maximum 415,000. The average yield has been 90,000 kilo- 
grammes per hectare. 

Note.— About 40 tons to the acre. 



FOOD VALUE OF MAIZE. 



It is only by experience that we can solve the question 
of the alimentary value of maize. I can assert, however, that 
at my home at Burtin, in the way in which I prepare it, 
maize with one-tenth of its weight of oat straw maintains my 



12 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OE MAIZE. 

animals in perfect condition. It would be, I confess, going 
too far to say that maize alone has the faculty of making very 
fat animals for fairs, or for high quality butcher stalls. Cows 
which are not being milked quickly take a condition entirely 
satisfactory to our country butchers, who are, as a class, less 
exacting than those of the city. But for perfect fattening it is 
necessary to add other aliments to the regular ration, such as 
beet-pulp. I have tried the experiment of fattening five ani- 
mals with my preserved maize, and an addition in the com- 
mencement of four kilogrammes per day of oilcake. They 
became fat with surprising rapidity. At this time seventj^- 
three horned animals live only upon maize and straw on 
my farms at Burtin and Gouillon, and my stables are always 
open to visiting farmers. Maize poorly preserved is a poor 
nutriment for animals, and may even become a poison for 
them. We should not lose sight of the fact that in the condi- 
tion of the preserved fodder there are an infinite number of 
degrees to which the nutritive value corresponds ; the method 
of cutting, the chemical modifications to which it is subjected, 
cause it to vary from single to double the nutritive power. 

Says one person to me, " I can use but one-half maize in 
my rations; otherwise my beasts would perish." Another says, 
"One-third is the maximum quantity that my beasts can 
stand in their rations." Another pretends that a quarter is 
hardly endurable. Gentlemen, only make good ensilages, and 
all will change with you, as it did with me. The ensilages of 
my first attempts were no better than yours. Little by little 
I have made them better, and therefore better supported my 
animals — that is the whole question. My much regretted re- 
lative, Louis Pilat, who held for many years the first rank in 
the art of fattening sheep, when pressed by me to divulge his 
secret, replied, " My secret: I have none ; it is only a question 
of fare. Induce the animals to eat abundantly by a large 
choice, variety, and good preparation of food ; that is all there 
is to it." 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 13 

Now is maize by itself a rich food ? Evidently not. With- 
out the analyses more or less exact that have been published, 
one fact proves its lack of richness in nutritive principles, and 
that is the large quantity that animals eat in order to keep 
them in good condition. This fact I have recognized and 
published twenty times. No one would pretend that a kilo- 
gramme of maize could be made to take the place of a kilo- 
gramme of lucern, clover, or French grass (sainfoin) ; but by 
supplying in quantity what it lacks in richness, we can main- 
tain our animals by maize as well as by the richest grasses. 
The question is to compare the selling value, or rather the 
price that returns from the two kinds of fodder, and to ascer- 
tain if twice the quantity, or even thrice, does not cost less 
than the products that it replaces. To me, the affirmative is 
not in doubt. The question is simpler when we apply it to 
comitries, too numerous indeed, which, like Sologne, produce 
good crops of maize, but are rebellious to the culture of rich 
fodder, lucern, sainfoin, etc. In such places the cultivator has 
no choice ; he has only to avail himself of the benefits of maize, 
and he is spared all embarrassment. One important point that 
a long practice has put for me beyond doubt is that the same 
green maize taken nourishes better, the weight being equal, 
when it is cut short than when it is fed whole, and that its 
nutritive power increases when it has been softened by lying 
several weeks in a silo, then undergoing a light commencement 
of alcoholic fermentation a few hours before being fed out. I 
estimate that with young animals acclimated, the increase of 
weight at eighty centimes per kilogramme (7 cents per lb.) will 
pay upon an average about 20 francs per thousand kilogram- 
mes of preserved maize (about $3.50 per ton). I consider this 
price as so nearly regular that I adopt it as a point of departure 
when I wish to reckon up my farming operations. 

Fattening by means of preserved maize, with an addition 
of cake of arachide (earth-nuts) has given me excellent results. 
I have fattened this winter eight animals from my stables 



14 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 

which I wished to part with on account of old age, sterility, 
deformity, under size, or mischievous disposition. Their value 
on foot before fattening was 55 centimes per kilogramme. 
They sold for 70 centimes per kilogramme ; there was an in- 
crease of weight of 447 kilogrammes, and in value 845 francs 
25 centimes. These animals consumed during their fattening, 
averaging 58 days, 2935 kilogrammes of oilcake, costing 10 
centimes per kilogramme, or a total of 293 francs 50 centimes. 
The maize therefore paid me about 45 francs per 1,000 kilo- 
grammes, which is indeed a high price, better than one could 
obtain either by milk, the increase of young animals, or other 
products of the stables. Preserved maize has also the merit 
of exciting to its highest point the appetite for oilcake, which 
is at first repugnant, especially at the commencement, if it is 
fed alone, without being mixed with maize, which has so much 
attraction for them. A third experience, viz., the nutritive value 
of maize in view of the raising of sucking calves, resulted in 
paying me 40 francs per 1,000 kilogrammes of maize. 

Numerous experiments will be necessary in order to set- 
tle these questions. I have wished simply to indicate them 
and to put them in some sort of order before recommencing 
them. The advantages that I have enumerated are not the 
only ones that belong to this culture. These plants have large 
and numerous leaves which exercise a happy influence upon 
the health of the country where they are cultivated. 

They absorb miasms which arise from the earth at the 
critical moment in certain countries where the crops of grain 
and fodder have just been removed. The maize in full vege- 
tation at that moment replaces, as an absorbent, the other vege- 
tation. Planted in gardens near habitations they play at first 
a hygienic role ; then gathered and dried, if need be near the 
hearth, and the stalks cut in pieces of eight to ten centimetres 
long, placed in a close vessel filled with warm water, they 
quickly produce an agreeable drink much appreciated by work- 
ingmen. 

Note. — Five centimes make a cent. A franc is l&nr cents. 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 15 



PROCESSES BY WHICH I HAVE SUCCEEDED IN ASSURING 
THE PRESERVATION OF GREEN MAIZE FOR AN INDE- 
FINITE TIME. 

The end to be attained is to prevent all kinds of fermen- 
tation before and after ensilage ; for the way to avoid bad fer- 
mentation is to not permit any. It is by not having discover- 
ed sooner this fundamental principle that so many seekers like 
myself have lost so many years in barren experiences. We 
wished to preserve maize by fermentation ; that is to say, we 
turned our backs on the solution of the problem. Fermenta- 
tion preserves nothing. On the contrary, it is always a pre- 
liminary step towards a decomposition more or less putrid, 
towards a real destruction. I have had this experience a 
thousand times : when my maize had contracted in my imper- 
fect silos alcoholic fermentation, I hastened to have it eaten up 
as soon as possible rather than to see it pass to acetic fermen- 
tation, and soon after to lactic or putrid fermentation. These 
experiences, so often repeated and always fruitless, had finally 
discouraged me. For a long time I had resigned myself to 
only require from my silos a temporary preservation of a few 
weeks at the most ; that is to say, the time that lapsed be- 
tween the ensilage and the appearance of putrid fermentation. 
I had, however, from that time, at my disposal all the elements 



10 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 

of a complete success. In 1853 I had established at Burtin a 
complete factory for preserving — a powerful feed-cutter from 
England, which has admirably performed for me, for more than 
twenty years ; a hydraulic power, eight-horse, to work the feed- 
cutter ; then at two steps from the feed-cutter, four silos, hol- 
lowed in the ground, plastered with Portland cement, and per- 
fectly water-tight. I cut at that time my maize in pieces of 
three to four centimetres long; I mixed a certain proportion 
of short straw (always too much), and I filled successively 
my silos by pressing down the layers of the mixture by one, 
and sometimes several persons treading upon it. After this 
pressing down with great pains, I placed on the top a layer of 
short straw about ten centimetres long, and above all a layer 
of loam, beaten with care, in order to prevent all contact be- 
tween the ensilaged maize and the air outside. During the 
following days I stopped up the fissures which appeared on 
the surface. When I proceeded, several weeks later, to open 
the silo, I found invariably a vacuum of several centimetres 
between the maize and the superincumbent clay. Notwith- 
standing the force of the compression that was produced during 
the ensilage, the maize had undergone another settling, and its 
upper part presented an alteration which would communicate 
rapidly to the lower layers. In order to avoid this result I 
had no other means than to feed it out as quickly as possible. 
Later I abandoned the clay as a covering for my silos. Imme- 
diately after having pressed in my mixture of cut maize and 
straw, I applied above all a covering of plank fitting exactly 
the opening of the silo, and descending with the maize as it 
shrunk down. This simple change produced a perceptible 
amendment, but it was quite insufficient still. The alteration 
was but little retarded, but I was on the right track. To-day 
I still use the same silos, and I obtain a preservation indefinite , 
and complete. In what then have I modified my processes ? 
Instead of cutting my maize in pieces of three or four centi- 
metres in length, I cut them one centimetre only. Instead of 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 17 

mixing a quarter and sometimes a third in weight of short 
straw, I never exceed the proportion of one-tenth, and oftener 
I bury the maize without any mixture. Finally, and here is 
the principal difference : I pile on the cover of my silo when 
it is filled, four or five hundred kilogrammes of stones or blocks 
of wood per square metre of surface. By my first processes I 
obtained only a temporary and incomplete preservation ; with 
my last I obtained a preservation indefinite and absolute. 
How have these three simple modifications led to such mar- 
vellous results! To explain this will be the object of the fol- 
lowing chapters. 

Note.— A centimetre is about -fc inch. 



HOW THE MAIZE SHOULD BE CUT. 

Agriculture does not generally appreciate at its full value 
the advantages that can be derived from the cutting of fodder 
as affecting the nourishment of cattle. Even besides the pre- 
paration for ensilage, these advantages are considerable. The 
feed-cutter with its cutting-knives and the fluted cylinders 
which precede them, and which act in some sort as molars, 
work certainly better and more economically than the jaws of 
our animals, especially when it is moved by water, by steam, 
or by horse-power. (I do not speak of the arms of men, which 
have become too scarce, and therefore too dear for that ser- 
vice.) The labor of mastication is an expenditure of force 
which the animal does not perform gratuitously. I leave to 
our skillful professors of mechanics the care of determining 
scientifically the effort that animals make in grinding the dif- 
ferent food that is presented, and which proportionately 
requires an addition to its ration in order to represent that ex- 



18 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 

penditure. I have seen in former times in my stables, when 
I caused my beasts to eat maize uncut, that they were fatigued 
by their incessant efforts to tear to pieces the large stalks, and 
were so exhausted as to fail to profit as they have done since 
by this excellent food when presented in a form more favora- 
ble for its absorption. Imagine two men obliged to support 
themselves, one upon the wheat in grain, and the other upon 
the same quantity reduced to flour. You may be sure that 
these two men would not profit equally from their respective 
food, which, however, is chemically the same. The same 
maize produces food very different in its effect, according to 
whether it has been only cut, or cut and softened by the com- 
mencement of fermentation, or offered to the animals in whole 
stalks more or less dry. The fineness to which I cut my 
maize at the moment of ensilation is extremely important in 
view of good preservation. Cut in disks of only one centime- 
tre thick, the maize packs better in the silo, it occupies less 
space, and takes the form and consistency of a species of pulp, 
leaving in its mass the least possible amount of air. In pro- 
portion as the length is increased, the preservation becomes 
less perfect, and finishes by being entirely defective. Last 
year a cultivator of the valley of the Loire, took from me the 
dimensions of my elliptic silo, and reproduced it exactly on his 
own farm. He filled it in the autumn, and when he opened it 
during the winter, he took out a poorly preserved product, 
which his beasts only eat with repugnance. Greatly disap- 
pointed, he brought to me a sample of his maize that he had 
cut in lengths of five to six centimetres, instead of one or two 
at most, as I had advised him. I recognized at once the cause 
of his failure, and asked him why, contrary to my, advice, he 
had cut it so long. He replied, " I was not able to procure a 
steam engine which I expected to use, and I had to use a 
horse-power ; the work did not get along fast enough, and in 
order to hasten it, I decided to cut it in such long pieces." He 
was surprised at the excellent preservation of the maize at 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 19 

Burtin, and he earned home a hundred kilogrammes ; his cat- 
tle were thus enabled to appreciate the difference. I cite this 
fact because it contains a valuable lesson. 



PROPER PROPORTION OF STRAW. 

At the beginning of my ensilages I had as principal 
resource for the sustenance of my stock a great quan- 
tity of wheat, oat, and rye straw, etc. In order to induce 
my cattle to eat it, I mixed all that I could with my maize and 
my green cut rye, but I was not slow to notice that this mixture 
kept much less time as the proportion of straw was greater. 
A fiftieth in volume, or a tenth in weight, was the maximum 
of what the maize could carry without being exposed to an 
early alteration ; when I increased this quantity, the time that 
it kept always diminished, and at last did not exceed forty- 
eight hours. I attribute this to the fact that the straw, being 
very dry, absorbs from the maize too much of its water. The 
moist condition of the ensilages, instead of being a cause 
of deterioration, is, on the contrary, to a certain extent, indis- 
pensable to the good preservation of the whole matter. 

Maize in its normal condition contains about eighty-five 
per cent, of water ; when the addition of dry straw has caused 
the mixture to decline to an average holding less than sev- 
enty-five per cent, the good preservation is much compro- 
mised, and quickly becomes impossible if we try to go below 
it. Besides the too great dehydratation that the presence of 
the straw may cause, it also offers another serious inconven- 
ience, especially rye straw. This straw when cut forms a 
great quantity of little tubes, the envelopes of which resist de- 
composition for a long time ; these tubes inclose an apprecia- 



20 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 

ble quantity of air, which is the most dangerous enemy of 
ensilage. Oat straw, or others of softer texture, are less dan- 
gerous in this respect than rye straw. While I used at first 
the short straw from my threshing, always troublesome on ac- 
count of the amount of room that it occupies, henceforth I 
shall bury my fodder almost without any mixture. Some- 
times, however, it is well to mix short straw with maize with- 
out passing suitable limits. Such a case presented itself at 
Burtin, in the autumn of 1876. When maize has been cut be- 
fore the frost, and arrives in good condition to the cutting- 
machine and then to the silo, it does not yield its water easily, 
even when it is submitted to a considerable pressure. But it 
is not the same when this fodder is too old, and has been ex- 
posed to the rains and frosts at the end of autumn. 

On one occasion, in October, 1876, I found, for lack of 
sufficient silos, that it was impossible to bury all my crop of 
maize. I was obliged to improvise a new silo, in an old build- 
ing, in order to place the surplus, and this ensilage was not 
completed until the first days of December. 

The stalks, touched by frost, had become very soft and 
weak. The cutting was difficult, but, most unfortunate of all, 
the layer of cut maize had scarcely attained in the silo two 
metres of thickness, when, by reason of the pressure upon the 
first layer, the juice began to run out freely through the open- 
ing, and this discharge continued for several days. This was 
a serious loss, which I could have avoided by mixing some 
cut straw with the overripe maize. Except in this case, my 
maize has never lost in this way any of its water ; at the dis- 
interment the bottoms of my silos have always been found 
nearly dry, barely moist. 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 21 



COMPRESSION OF THE SILOS. 

It is indispensable to superimpose four or five hundred 
kilogrammes per square metre of heavy materials upon thecover- 
ing or movable planks of the filled silos. I meet here the most 
important question— that which I have had the most trouble 
to solve, and which I have only really solved quite recentlv. 
When a silo has been filled, it does not answer only to prevent 
the external air from penetrating it; it is necessary at once to 
seek means for expelling the mass of air that it incloses be- 
tween its disks and in its cells. It is here that the heavy ma- 
terials with which I load my silos become important ; it is 
necessary that the air inclosed in the silo should find between 
the joints of the covering planks an outlet ; it is necessary that 
a strong compression should compel this air to pass out quick- 
ly and to quit the place where it would cause most serious 
damage if it remained. It is necessary that this powerful 
compression should continue during several months, because 
the tramping of the workmen is insufficient, for the following 
reasons : At the moment when the green maize is cut, it is all 
alive, and is so elastic that it reacts forcibly against the mo- 
mentary pressure of the feet of the workmen. It is not the 
same several days or weeks thereafter, but. its elasticity dimin- 
ishes, or, in other words, its compressibility increases in con- 
siderable proportions ; it is then that the heavy superimposed 
materials follow the maize down in its softened condition, con- 
tinuing to press it in proportion as its compactness increases, 
and brings it to that state of density that is necessary in order 
to put it out of reach of all alteration. 

Note. — A metre is about 3 fe>st '?,]/{ iuches. 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 



THE PROPER HYDROMETRIO CONDITION OF MAIZE AT THE 
TIME OF ENSILAGE. 

A fault which I often committed at the commencement 
of my experiments, was to leave my maize upon the field in 
order that it might undergo a partial desiccation before the 
ensilage. This is to be avoided absolutely. When the water 
evaporates from the cells of the maize, it is immediately re- 
placed by air; that is to say, by the most active agent in all 
alteration. Let the maize keep all its water, if you wish to 
preserve it by ensilage. 

All the directions which I have laid down as proper for the 
ensilage of maize, apply to all other fodder without dis- 
tinction, and insure the same success. If I speak more par- 
ticularly of maize, it is because I have found in that wonder- 
ful plant all the elements of a new and boundless agricultural 
wealth, from the day when I arrived at the assurance of its in- 
definite preservation by ensilage for the nourishment of my 
cattle throughout the whole year. Before this time it had 
hardly nourished them during three months, while it was pos- 
sible to feed it to them green. 



EFFECTS OF ENSILAGE UPON FODDER. 

My maize, my green rye, my fodder of all kinds, have 
scarcely changed color, after eight or ten months of ensilage ; 
fed exclusively to my animals, they produce exactly the same 
effects, the same abundance of milk and butter, the same flavor, 
and the same color to the butter. These qualities, so important to 



CULTUEE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 23 

butter preserved through the winter by the ensilage, are in my 
eyes the true touchstone, when we seek to appreciate the re- 
spective merits of the different processes of preservation of fod- 
der. Let a farmer show me the butter that his ensilage gives him 
during the winter, and I will have no need of other means of 
investigation in order to arrive at his skill. " A workman is 
known by his work." 

I opened in April, 1877, my last elliptic silo, which con- 
tained nearly 100,000 kilogrammes of maize, ensilaged in Octo- 
ber, 1876, more than seven months. It disclosed a very compact 
mass of a brownish green color; the temperature-did not exceed 
10 degrees (Reamur) ; there was no appreciable odor; taken 
in the mouth it was really insipid, and this freedom from odor 
and taste produced at first an almost disagreeable sensation. 

I detached from the mass several hundred kilogrammes, 
intended for the next feeding of my animals. It was hardly 
exposed to the air when it underwent a veritable change : the 
brownish color became sensibly green, the beginning of alco- 
holic fermentation took place, without exceeding the limits 
which that fermentation ought never to pass. That silo was 
not completely exhausted until the 10th of August, and the 
maize remained in good condition until the last day. My 
forty-days maize reached at that time the point where it was 
suitable to be cut for fodder ; it had attained its full height, 
and in the month of August my animals eat it green ; they 
were only ten days without maize during the year 1877. 

My silos of rye will be consumed during the winter. I do 
not need to say that green rye is much richer than maize, and 
a much smaller quantity will go as far ; the mixture of these 
two kinds of fodder is an excellent diet 

My animals, fed upon maize ensilage during the whole 
winter, scarcely drink when they are loosened in the middle 
of day to quench their thirst at the river which crosses my 
farm ; nearly all return to the stable without having approached 
it 



24 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 

Their excrements, of medium consistency, denote a very- 
favorable pathological condition. We must conclude that 
maize ensilage in the matter of retaining water is a well bal- 
anced food, since it furnishes to animals, in most suitable pro- 
portion, food and drink. Each one of my ensilages may be 
regarded as an immense cylinder, and its covering of plank, a 
gigantic piston, whose surface exceeds fifty square metres ; the 
heavy substances which I superimpose act as a motive power, 
causing the piston to descend and compress the ensilage, 
leaving between the planks an outlet for the air, which the 
compression is intended to drive out. My large operations I 
have frequently repeated in a small way, with a glass jar 27 
centimetres in diameter and 50 centimetres in height; a wooden 
disk, surmounted with a faucet, furnished with a rubber tube, 
acts as a piston ; I load it with a certain ascertained weight in 
order to compress the matter in the jar ; a second faucet is put 
in the bottom, when the pressure commences to lower the pis- 
ton. The air in the ensilage escajDes by the two faucets, and I 
easily ascertain the quantity. In the beginning the faucets 
give out pure air, the volume of which is exactly equal to that 
the mass has lost ; afterward, if the compression has been in- 
sufficient and has left a certain amount of air in the mass, it is 
no longer pure air which comes out when I open the faucets ; 
there have been some very interesting modifications produced 
in the mass, interesting to follow and well worth the study 
of the chemist. 

"But," as has been kindly said to me, " you are making sour- 
krout; that was made long before you did it." If I am making 
sour-krout, or anything resembling it, I make it without cab- 
bage and without pickle, with different kinds of fodder, and 
my sour-krout cost but £ centime a kilogramme ; it is sour- 
krout for animals, who show themselves very grateful fo r it 
This sour-krout is a complete agricultural revolution. 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 25 



HOW TO BUILD A SILO. 

With my new stables at Burtin finished, I shall be able 
to house one hundred horned cattle. My ensilages of 1877 
only permit me to feed seventy, but with those of 1878 I 
expect to be able to feed one hundred. I have just finished 
three united silos, which form a part of the plan of my new 
stable. 

The form of the silo exercises a great influence upon the 
results. It should avoid all angles, and should offer the least 
possible resistance to the packing down of the ensilage. The 
elliptic silo with vertical walls is the best form both for use 
and for durability. It is important to have them as large as 
possible compatible with the conditions of easy and economi- 
cal use. The preservation of the ensilage in small silos is 
always less perfect than in large ones. .No matter how much 
care is used and how much weight is applied, I have always 
found the portion which is farthest from the walls to be the 
best preserved, and that close to the walls there is always 
some alteration, not serious, but which it is important to re- 
duce as much as possible. Small receptacles offer proportion- 
ally much more surface for contact. A rectangular silo, for 
example, of one metre each way, containing one cubic metre, 
presents five square metres of contact surface, while one of 
ten cubic metres, with 1,000 cubic metres of contents, presents 
only 500 square metres of contact surface, diminishing nine- 
tenths the evil indicated. But I do not advise silos of such 
dimensions as this. At the commencement of my experiments 
1 recommended small silos, in order that when opened they 
might be quickly consumed before they became a prey to the 
slow combustion which the contact with the air produced, 
with as small an entrance as possible for the air, of which the 
first effect was to raise the temperature, and then produce fer- 



26 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 

mentation, first alcoholic, next acetic, and then putrid. But 
the day that I discovered the new process of a movable 
weighted covering, so that I was able to maintain in the mass 
a continuous density whereby the penetration of the air be- 
came impossible, I abandoned the small silos. Since then I 
have made them as large as possible, and they are only lim- 
ited by the economy of the different operations of ensilage. 



HOW TO FILL A SILO. 



It is necessary to procure, either by purchase or rental, a 
motive power and a powerful feed-cutter. Large farms are 
generally provided with these machines, but the average 
farmer will have to hire. It may be that the travelling con- 
tractors for threshing will become contractors for cutting maize 
for ensilage, with a machine that possesses sufficient weight to 
be solid, and is also portable. Filling the silo should be done 
as rapidly as possible, and the layer of maize should be kept 
level all the time. The greater the compression the better 
will be the preservation. The packing along the walls (which 
should be as smooth as possible) should be attended to care- 
fully. A woman turning continually as near as possible to 
the walls will accomplish this very well. 

When the silo is filled to the top and carefully leveled, 
spread along the surface short straw four or five centimetres 
thick, then place on top of this boards fitting close to- 
gether. These should be put across the silo in order that 
when it is being fed out they may be taken off one by one, as 
the silo is cut down vertically. Upon this flooring there should 
be piled abundance of weight, such as stones, bricks, logs of 
wood, or old bags filled with dirt, etc. At Burtin I have aban- 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE 27 

doned using- loose earth as a means of compression, as it infil- 
trates into the ensilage, and adhering to the walls a vacuum 
forms as the maize settles away, which is destructive. 

Note. — The translator lost his first investment in ensilage by depending upon 
«arth covering, which arched by freezing and left a vacuum. 




A filled Silo being emptied by vertical slicing. 

Any ridge on the silos is objectionable, as the ensilage 
cannot be sufficiently compressed, and the dry rot soon at- 
tacks it and communicates to the material below. 

As to using salt in the silos, it is not very important, and 
I often omit it without any bad result ; but I believe the mod- 
erate use of salt is favorable to the health of animals, and I 
sometimes mix in my ensilage one kilogramme to a cubic 
metre of maize, the average weight of which, after being 
packed, is 812 kilogrammes. 

When the ensilage is fed out it should be exposed to the 
air fifteen or twenty hours, in order that the alcoholic fermen- 
tation may commence. The proper time depends upon the 
temperature, but if kept longer than this, the fermentation be- 
comes excessive and injurious. The spontaneous heat which 
is produced in the feed should never exceed 35 or 40 degrees 
(R.). Two years ago I had no silos at my farm at Gouillon, 
and I carried every other day from Burtin what was neces- 
sary. From the second day the heat exceeded these limits, 
and the alcoholic vapor abundantly emitted indicated the seri- 



28 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OE MAIZE. 

ous loss that was going on. The acetic acid was not slow to 
join the party. In the north, the beet pulp that is fed in win- 
ter is nearly always quite sour ; it is to this circumstance that 
I attribute the poor quality of milk and butter obtained from 
the animals kept on this food. 



THE NEW STABLES AT BURTIN, AND THEIR SILOS. 

My new stables are a square of twenty-four metres on 
each side, divided into two compartments, each of which has a 
central passage between two rows of stalls. These passages 
are connected with the silos by a small railway, which makes 
it convenient to bring the feed before each animal. The maize 
and the other ensilaged fodder is earned in willow baskets all 
of the same size, which are frequently weighed in order to keep 
account of the weight of the rations given to each lot of cattle. 
My silos are elliptic in form, with perpendicular walls as 
smooth as possible inside, five metres wide and the same 
height. Should I modify them in any way in future it will be 
only to increase the height. 

My farm at Burtin presents exceptional difficulties for 
building silos. Everywhere the water is met at one metre below 
the surface, and as I want to sink my silos nearly two metres, 
because the part below the ground preserves in summer more 
moisture than that part above the ground, I am obliged to first 
dig a ditch lower than the excavation all around it, and 
then to cement the lower part, which causes a considerable 
expense. I put concrete on the bottom, and upon this I 
build the vertical walls of the thickness of two bricks (45 
centimetres) to the top of the ground. Above the ground I 
reduce the thickness to one brick and a half (about 34 centi- 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 



29 



metres.) I coat the walls with Portland cement sufficient to 
insure their perfect impermeability. My triple silos have cost 
me 4176 francs, and their total capacity 812.45 cubic metres, 
about 5 francs 14 centimes per cubic metre. I intend next 
year to raise the walls of my silos another metre, so that their 
capacity will be about a thousand cubic metres. I postpone 
till that time my decision as to a special cover for them. 




Plan of united Silos. 



Most agriculturists are more favored in the profile of their 
soil ; many of them have a hillside in the neighborhood of their 
barn, in which they can open silos that will always be dry, and in 
some places can dispense with masonry by having solid rock. 
Those who wish to imitate me will have less hesitation when 
they know that Burtin is a particularly bad place for building 
silos, and that they can obtain the same results with much 
less outlay. 

In making use of such large silos as these it is necessary 
of course to have a cutting-machine with a six-horse power 
engine at least, and an elevator to raise the cut fodder over 



30 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 

the walls of the silos. I estimate that with these instruments 
one silo can be filled in three days at most without difficulty. 
This rapidity is necessary in order to assure the success of 
ensilage. When the elevator and cutter are combined in the 
same machine, the process will be simplified. 

As to the average farmer, as I have already said, it will 
be better to employ the thi'eshing-machine contractors, who 
will find it to their interest to adapt themselves to this busi- 
ness also. It is above all the duty of the wealthy agriculturists 
who have entered upon the way that I have indicated, and 
from whom I receive every day so many grateful letters, 
to assist the willing farmers around them, and who have need 
of their advice. For my part, I shall hold myself in the future 
as in the past always at the disposal of farmers who think 
they need to recur to my experience. 

I engage to pay a prize of 500 francs to the first thresh- 
ing-machine contractor who will prove to me that he has en- 
silaged in this way at least 2,000,000 kilogrammes of fodder. 



EFFECTS OF FROST IN SEPTEMBER, 1877, AT BURTIN. 

I had hardly finished this little work when I was sur- 
prised, as were all my confreres, by a meteorological circum- 
stance that was exceedingly injurious. A heavy frost in the 
nights of the 22d and 23d of September and following, stopped 
short the vegetation of my maize, which at the bottom of my 
valley had the appearance of having been burned down to the 
roots. My maize on higher ground suffered less, but the 
growth is also stopped, and the crop will be much smaller. 
When such a misfortune occurs, the most effective way to 
lessen it is to cut the maize and proceed with the ensilage im- 
mediately. Thanks to the prompt measures taken, the frost 
caused me little other damage than a diminution of the 
crop, according as it had more or less attained its full devel- 
opment. The maximum height of my stalks was 4.72 metres, 
and from that down to 3 metres. 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 31 

HISTORY OF M. GOFFART'S INVENTION. 

From his Speech at JBlois, May 8, 1875. 

In 1850 I made some experiments in the ensilage of 
wheat at Versailles, since which time the preservation of fod- 
der has become my favorite occupation. In 1852 I construct- 
ed four underground silos, with masonry, and cemented, each 
having a capacity of two cubic metres ; these silos I have 
filled and emptied several thousand times. Maize, Jerusalem 
artichokes, beets, sorgho, turnips, potatoes, straw, I have ex- 
perimented upon with more or less success. Straw, in the 
scarcity of fodder, has several times saved my stables. Some 
years ago I had in the autumn more than 80 horned cattle, 
and my hay crop would not have permitted me to support 10, 
One should be an agriculturist of Sologne to know what such a 
trouble means. In rich countries when the hay crop fails, it 
means that instead of harvesting 5,000 or 6,000 kilogrammes to 
the hectare, there are only 3,000 or 4,000, but in Sologne it 
means that there is no crop at all. In such difficulties the en- 
terprising cultivator must use more intelligence and more in- 
dustry. " What the man is worth, that the land is worth," is 
an old proverb, but I will improve upon it by saying, the man 
should be worth more, as the land is worth less. 

I got through safely that year by having 50,000 bundles 
of wheat, rye, and oat straw. I cut them up, and with 35 
kilogrammes of rye flour, which I fermented each day in large 
tubs, and in which I soaked the straw, I obtained food that 
was softened by fermentation, which my cattle ate freely and 
digested easily. Thus I reached the following spring without 
being obliged to sell my cattle at a low price. I must ac- 
knowledge that at the end of winter my beasts were in a sorry 
condition, but the first grass quickly restored them, and I was 
not compelled to replace them at a high price in the spring ; 



32 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 

and now, the two years of scarcity which my fellow-agricultu- 
rists have passed through have been for me — owing to my 
silos — years of unprecedented plenty. What I have done can 
be done by thousands of others, and my earnest desire, my sole 
ambition, is to enable them to imitate me as soon as possible. 
Until 1872 I only expected from my limited ensilages the 
means of prolonging for three weeks, or at most a month, the 
use of maize, so desirable a food for my cattle. To that end 
I made many experiments. I have mixed my cut maize with 
various proportions of straw, in order to find which would give 
the best result. I have made silos without cover, burying the 
ensilage under bundles of straw, then with earth (never sand). 
I have filled my four silos with every possible mixture, which 
would sooner have put me upon the road to a positive success 
if I had not been too easily alarmed by slight alterations on 
the surface, and which I caused to extend all through by too 
frequent examinations. 

In 1873 I had a real success, due mainly to accident ; and 
it is to be recognized that chance nearly always plays an im- 
portant part in the happiest discoveries. 

Until this time I had hardly believed that the preservation 
of green maize for a long time was possible, and I had very 
little confidence. I hesitated a while, and should have proba- 
bly hesitated a good while longer if I had not been in a measure 
compelled to do something. The year 1873 had been excep- 
tionally favorable for the culture of maize. At Burtin the crop 
was enormous. After having fed my cattle abundantly until 
October, besides having all that they could eat while green till 
December, I found that I had more than 170,000 kilogrammes 
that would be lost if I could not keep it at least till the follow- 
ing March. I went resolutely to work, and I have described 
elsewhere the means that I used and the result that I obtained. 
The difficulties were greater than one would believe, on account 
of the lack of faith of my employees. One day I had to leave 
my workmen for a while, but my return was sooner than they 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 33 

expected. The work had ceased, of course. They were talk- 
ing together, and I overheard my foreman say to the workmen, 
" This work that we are doing is all foolishness ; M. G-offart had 
better throw his maize into the dung-heap at once, because that 
is where it will go to at last. " I said nothing, but redoubled 
my watchfulness, knowing how little zeal I could expect from 
people so convinced of the uselessness of their labor. 

A silo built upon the ground gives the best result during 
the cold season from December to March, but as the tempera- 
ture rises fermentation develops rapidly. The underground 
silo with masonry walls is better ; the temperature does not rise 
even in April, and at-Burtin at this time (May 8) it is nearly in 
the same condition as at the time of ensilage, seven months ago. 
I would advise that the silo be sunk two metres in the ground, 
with masonry walls, and raised two meters above the ground 
During the cold weather I would feed out the ensilage in the 
upper half, and reserve for the warmer months the lower half. 

The experiment of an underground silo, but without facing 
the walls with masonry, has also given a favorable result, in the 
sense that the loss has only been one per cent of the whole, but 
such a silo soon falls down when it is empty, and consequently 
is much inferior to the former. There is another method, the 
simplicity of which is a dangerous temptation to the inexperi- 
enced. That is to pile the cut maize upon the soil, and to cover 
it with a layer of earth. I can assert that such a silo has never 
given good results. The packing down, which is essential to 
good preservation, cannot be applied to such a silo. Those who 
recommend this method of ensilage manifest a culpable igno- 
rance, and cause great loss to those who follow their advice. 
When one loses half his capital in an operation, he is not suc- 
cessful; he makes a disastrous speculation. I proscribe this 
method in the most positive manner. 

I once buried, for experiment, a thousand kilogrammes of 
corn-stalks, uncut, under a stack of straw, forming* a layer 25 
centimetres thick. In eight days it went to the dung-heap. 



34 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 

The cost of gathering and ensilaging 226,000 kilogram- 
mes of maize has been as follows : 

Francs. 

57 days of men, at 2 francs Hi. 00 

9 clays of women, at 1 franc 10 centimes 9.90 

5 days of 2 drivers and 4 horses, at 16 francs 80.00 

5 days of engine, from contractor, at 10 francs 50.00 

Old wood for engine, 3 francs per day 15.00 

Total 268.90 



Making cost of 1 franc 18 centimes per 1,000 kilogrammes 
(about 20 cents per gross ton). About 40'per cent of this ex- 
pense was for the cutting and putting in the silos. 

We should not lose sight of the fact that the crushing of the 
food saved to the cattle by the cutting is in itself an important 
saving of food. 

It is above all important to avoid all kinds of fermenta- 
tion during and after ensilage. Fermentation can be pro- 
duced whenever desired, and a few hours suffice to give all 
its useful effects. Take each evening from your silo the maize 
required for the next day's feeding, and 15 or 16 hours after, 
however cold and free from fermentation when taken out, it 
will be quite warm, and in full fermentation, and the animals 
will eat it greedily. Eight hours later it will have passed the 
proper limits, and it will rapidly spoil. 

This first fermentation increases the facility of digestion, 
and therefore the nutritive or assimilative power of the food. 
For instance, when cattle live on fresh maize in the summer, 
they eat large quantities, and are always big-bellied, which 
shows that they are obliged to supply what is Jacking in 
quality by an excessive consumption ; but when they live on 
ensilaged maize which has fermented, their bellies are smaller, 
they eat less, and their whole condition is more satisfactory. 
To study all things, to try all things, to be always willing to 
change the system when one finds himself in the wrong — 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 35 

such is the duty of the agriculturist, whose lot perhaps is too 
much envied. 

For my part, I have had in my agricultural career some 
hard experiences. 

In January, 1871, when I returned to Burtin, after having 
taken part in the defence of Paris, I found my stables entirely 
empty; the typhus had carried off in a few days 63 horned 
animals out of 64. By successive increase with Norman bulls, 
which I had changed every two years, I had created for my- 
self a new and very fine race, and my stables were justly re- 
nowned in Sologne. In ten days I had lost the fruit of twen- 
ty years' labor. The blow was severe, but I hardly felt it 
What was the loss of a few thousand francs compared with the 
great national grief which was causing all our hearts to bleed? 
I began again my work with courage. I bought young ani- 
mals to replenish my stables, which continually improve, but 
I am aware that time will fail me to replace what I have lost. 
Let us strive courageously. Perhaps the most obscure of the 
pioneers of agriculture brings you to-day an effective means 
with which you can charm away the dearth of fodder, which is 
one of the greatest plagues of agricultural industry. 

Do not deny to this poor but interesting Sologne the 
honor of having been the cradle of a system of ensilage that is 
effectively preservative, and of having given an example that 
the richest countries will not be slow to imitate. This is my 
earnest prayer and brightest hope. 

Monsieur Goffart "was awarded by the French Government in 1876 for this inven- 
tion, the Decoration of the Legion of Honor. 



36 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 



APPENDIX 



REPORT TO THE CENTRAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY OF 
FRANCE BY A COMMITTEE OF THE SECTIONS ON LIVE 
STOCK, PHYSICO-CHEMICAL AND HIGH CULTIVATION, 
UPON THE SUBJECT OF THE ENSILAGE OF GREEN 
CUT CORN FODDER.— SEANCE APRIL 7, 1875. 

Your committee considered that the question of the pres- 
ervation of a fodder so productive and so desirable as maize 
deserved to be studied, and if the results should be found as 
satisfactory as M. Goffart has announced, it should be brought 
to the attention of the agricultural public ; therefore, I have 
been directed to present to you our report upon this important 
subject. 

All methods of preservation of food interest deeply the 
farming community which produces it, and the whole nation 
that consumes it. It tends to reduce losses by deterioration 
and by waste ; it mitigates the deplorable alternations of 
low prices for crops, which ruin the agriculturists, and of 
high prices, which weaken every portion of the commonwealth. 
Finally, it insures regular food to animals and men, which in- 
creases the energy and adds to the productive power of the 
nation. The preservation of maize in a green state lends a 
special interest to the value of that fodder for milch cows, be- 
cause the crop is so variable, according to the season, and the 
time for consuming it in the autumn is so short if not pre- 
served. When the heat and moisture of the season favor the 
vegetation, it produces such large crops that it cannot be con- 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 37 

sumed before the frost destroys it, while the dried leaves and 
stalks are of very little value. Many agriculturists who 
have introduced this excellent fodder in their business have 
tried various ways of preserving for the winter what could not 
be consumed in the autumn, with results more or less satisfac- 
tory, but oftener the latter. There have been many prece- 
dents of a nature to justify these efforts. The preservation of 
grape leaves green near Lyons for the food of cattle and goats 
has made a high reputation for the cheese called Mont Dore 
from time immemorial. Apple pomace has been preserved in 
silos with good results. In various parts of Germany the 
preservation of vegetables of all sorts — turnips, cabbages, and 
different kinds of leaves seasoned with celery for feeding 
cows — runs back as far in the night of time as that of sour cab- 
bage (sauer-kraut) for the food of men. In the north of 
France,. several large agriculturists have preserved for twen- 
ty years in silos the leaves of beets, also the beets cut across, 
which have kept better than the whole beets in cellars. The 
pulp of beets, from distilleries or sugar factories, also makes 
excellent fodder when kept in silos. The world is so old, ne- 
cessity has so long compelled the efforts of human beings, that 
we may find precedents in every line of improvement. But 
all experienced men who know the great difference that sepa- 
rates a happy suggestion, or even a successful attempt, from a 
practice well enough confirmed to become the base of a reg- 
ular business, will admit that these precedents do not destroy 
the merit of any man who, like Monsieur A. Goffart, has ac- 
complished a continued success. If the cultivation of maize 
and the method of ensilage have given the results that he 
claims, and the samples submitted indicates, he merits our 
eulogies. 

M. Goffart states that he commenced to experiment with 
maize and ensilage in 1852, and what we have seen at Burtin 
proves that his experiments have led him to a practical success. 
We have been very favorably impressed by the silos that were 



38 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 

located in the old distillery which had been used for the daily 
feeding of the cows. These silos were made by lateral walls 
of two and a half metres in height, without any excavation, 
and the maize piled upon the ground as high as the floor above 
permitted. M. G-offart had thought best to cut the maize fine 
before ensilaging it, for the following reasons : First, a more 
uniform mixture of short straw with leaves and stalks ; second, 
a division of the stalks in short pieces makes them more easy 
for the animals to masticate, and with less waste ; third, a 
packing down more regular and more effective in the mass. 

Note. — The further description of the process of ensilage is omitted, as the pre- 
ceding directions are the result of later experience, by which the author learned to 
avoid all fermentation. 

The fodder has an alcoholic odor, quite marked and 
slightly acid. It is eaten with avidity by the cows, and con- 
stitutes their sole food since the commencement of winter. 
We were struck by the healthy appearance of the 28 or 30 
cows — their eyes were bright, the skin soft, and they were 
in good condition. But the point that above all attracted our 
attention was the sucking calves, which are the most delicate, 
and are always the first to suffer from any deficient or bad 
food given to their mothers. We did not see a single one 
that had hair in bad condition, or that was scouring. The 
fodder that produced this excellent result contained neither 
salt nor oilcake, and one would naturally inquire if it would 
1 <e sufficient in all cases. It is probable that for very good 
milkers, where the quantity per day is 25 to 30 litres, it 
would be necessary to add some meal or oilcake to the ra- 
tion of maize which we saw distributed, and which weighed 
28 kilogrammes per day; but for the cows in the stable of M. 
Goffart, weighing alive 400 to 500 kilogrammes, this ration 
seemed to be sufficient for them and their calves. In order to 
show the importance of the preservation of maize, I will give 
only one figure, which is, that a crop of 120,000 kilogrammes 
per hectare corresponds to about one-fifth its weight of dry 

NOTE. — A litre is about 1^ pint. 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 39 

substance per hectare — a magnificent result, superior by far to 
that which can be obtained even with beets raised for food ot 
cattle in the lands similar to those of the domain of Burtin. 
The stock produces a great mass of manure. These facts 
have had a very happy influence upon the business at 
Burtin, and which perhaps will serve as an example to a 
country which, notwithstanding the immense amelioration 
which it has derived from railroads, by bringing to it marl 
and phosphate fertilizers, has need to pass beyond the uncer- 
tainty in which it has for a long time languished. We have 
not thought best to enter into a discussion as to net profits, 
always quite delicate, because the price varies so much, ac- 
cording to the commercial circumstances of the locality, and 
the local management of each business. It is evident that a 
cultivation of maize which produces 60,000 to 100,000 kilo- 
grammes of stalks per hectare, which must be carried to the 
machine, cut, carried, and packed into silos, and afterward 
taken out, involves a considerable expense. But it is evident 
also that a plant which produces such quantities of excellent 
fodder is the base of a profitable cultivation. It is not less 
evident that, if the business is laid out in a judicious manner, 
so as to avoid all unnecessary manoeuvres and portage, as is 
observed by factories, the cost can be reduced to an almost 
incredibly small figure. ' 

It is not well to advise farmers, whose means are often 
already insufficient, to invest an important part of their capital 
in constructions ; but we should call their attention to the 
consequences of the continual elevation of the price of hand 
labor, and the scarcity and increasing worthlessness of farm 
hands. We cannot operate to-day as we formerly did, be- 
cause the successive operations of opening and covering the 
silos in a distant field, the time lost in going and coming 
without overseeing, and the force wasted in transportation in 
bad weather, have become too costly. We see no reason why 
a silo under shelter may not be constructed with such economy 



40 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 

that the ensilage of 1,000 kilogrammes of fodder may net as 
low a cost as in silos made in the ground. 

We hope also to report soon to the Society some figures 
which concern another sort of granary, and which prove that 
1,000 kilogrammes of oats may be kept in chests of iron, which 
protect it from all risks at less cost than in the usual grain bin. 

Finally, our conclusion can only be very favorable to the 
efforts of M. Groffart, We find that he has made a remarkable 
success, in having created a business based upon the cultiva- 
tion and preservation in silos of maize fodder. He has creat- 
ed in the midst of poor Sologne a type of agriculture which 
should be cited as an example, even to those parts of the 
country that are better conditioned. He merits, therefore, the 
thanks and congratulations of the Central Agricultural Society 
of France. 

These resolutions were put to vote, and unanimously 
earned. 



THE ANALYSIS AND COMPOSITION OF MAIZE CUT IN 
GREEN STATE. 

From a letter to M. A. Goffart, from J. A. Barral, Perpetual 
Secretary of the Central Agricultural Society of France, editor 
of Journal de V Agriculture ; 

You do not seek to produce a fermentation in the cut fod- 
der. You propose to maintain all its parts in a condition 
as near as possible like that of the plant at the moment that 
it is cut. I have undertaken the solution of a question of 
vegetable physiology which presents a scientific interest, and 
also a practical interest of the first order. 

It is important to ascertain what is the distribution of min- 
eral and organic matter in the different parts of the stalk of 
maize. When it is cut for the silo it becomes a mixture of all 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 41 

parts of the plant in such a manner as to give to the stock 
those that are richest in nourishment as well as those that are 
poorest. This is one of the advantages of the method which 
you have used so many years. If you give the corn plant to 
the stock in the natural state, they will eat first the tender 
parts, and will leave the hard parts, which offer the most resist- 
ance to the teeth and which have the least flavor. 

I have taken thirteen stalks of maize, weighing altogether 
16. 795 kilogrammes, and have cut them up into six lots, as fol- 
lows : Each of these lots has been desiccated at 100 degrees (R). 
The stalks were cut into three parts. The length of each por- 
tion was, Upper part, 0.65m. ; middle part, 0.88m. ; lower 
part, 0.80m. ; the average total length of each stalk, without 
tassels, being 2.33m. 

Weight in green Weight after de- Water, or Loss, 
state, siccation. per cent. 

Grammes. Grammes. 

Leaves 4.805 1.315 72.03 

Tassel 102 .047 56.07 

Ear, with stem 3.026 .752 75.14 

Upper part of stalk 1.270 .125 90.15 

Middle part of stalk 2.446 .341 86.06 

Lower part of stalk 5.146 .661 87.15 

The thirteen stalks 16.795 3.241 80.76 

Thus, the water was quite unequally distributed in the 
stalk. They were more watery at the upper part, but the 
flowering portion was much less ; the grain was still milky. 
The relations between the different parts of the plant are 
found to be as follows : 

Normal state. Dry state. 

Leaves 29.20) 40.57) 

Tassel 66 £ 47.87 1.42 [ 65.19 

Ear, with stem 18.01) 23.20) 

Upper part stalk 7.56 ) 3.85 ) 

Middle part stalk 14.86 V 52.13 10.52 \ 34.81 

Lower part stalk 30.01) 20.44) 

100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 



42 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 

This shows that the stalks, when fresh, surpass in weight 
the remainder of the organs of the plant. They contain, how- 
ever, a less proportion of dry matter, and less than the leaves, 
which have in the fresh state a much less weight. I have 
analyzed separately each of the six lots, and I have obtained 
the following composition in organic substance and ashes, or 
mineral substance : 



Organic substance. 
Ashes or mineral 


Leaves. 
89.01 

10.99 


Tassel. 
94.80 

5.20 


Ears. 

98.30 
1.70 


Upper. 

95.43 

4.57 


— Stalk- 
Middle. 

97.31 
2.69 


Lower. 

98.26 
1.74 


Entire 
Plant. 
94.26 

5.74 



100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 

Thus it is seen that the mineral substance is accumulated 
in the leaves and upper part of stalk. 

Here are the exact proportions of the mineral substance 
in the different organs of maize ; 



Middle part of stalk 4.87 

Lower part of stalk 6.29 



Leaves 77.70 

Tassel 1.22 

Ear and stem 6.79 

Upper part of stalk 3.13 100.00 

Thus, more than 77 per cent of mineral substance is ac- 
cumulated in the leaves, more than 14 per cent in the stalk, 
and only about 6 per cent in the ear. 

"We will now ascertain the composition of the different 
parts of the plant, as. appears when desiccated : 

-Stalk. * Entire 



Leaves. Tassels. Ears. Upper. Middle. Lower. Plant. 

Nitrogenous substances. 6.28 6.27 11.09 4.34 3.86 3.37 6.47 
Fatty matter soluble in 

ether 1.30 1.90 2.50 1.00 .40 .30 1.28 

Saccharine matter solu- 
ble in alcohol 6.50 4.70 8.30 17.50 20.60 21.00 11.77 

Starch 64.33 25.23 73.51 39.49 38.65 35.79 56.35 

Cellulose 10.60 56.70 2.90 33.10 33.80 38.00 18.37 

Mineral substance 10.99 5.20 1.70 4.57 2.G9 1.74 5.74 



Total 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 

Nitrogenous (per cent) . 1.004 1.004 1.775 .694 .617 .540 1.033 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 43 

The ear is found, as we would expect, much richer in 
nitrogenous substance than the other parts of the plant. The 
nutritive power, as it is agreed to define it, by the relation of 
azotic substance to the sum of the fatty matter, sugar, and 
starch, is quite inferior in the stalks to that of the other organs, 
as the following table shows : 

Taking the ear as unity, 
the proportionate nutritive power Nutritive value of 
is as follows: whole plant. 

Leaves 66 2.54 

Tassel 1.49 09 

Ears 1.00 2.57 

Upper part stalk .57 17 

Middle part stalk .49 41 

Lower part stalk .45 69 

6.47 

The stalk, however, shows that it is very rich, and, above 
all, the leaves, which therefore should be taken care of for 
the cattle. The fatty matter is concentrated in the leaves and 
in the ear; the saccharine matter in the leaves and stalk, and 
mostly in the lower part of the stalk. 

The following table indicates the concentration of saccha- 
rine matter in the leaves and stalk : 

Each part contributes The different parts to whole. 

Leaves 2.64 22.36 

Tassel 07 59 

Ears 1.93 ..'. 16.41 

Upper part stalk .67 5.69 

Middle part stalk 2.17 18.45 

Lower part stalk 4.29 36.50 



11.77 100.00 



Cellulose substance is, as we would expect, in large pro- 
portion in the stalk, and mostly toward the lower part of it. 
It is principally in the leaves and ear, with stem, that the 



44 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 



starch and the other principles which are neither cellulose 
nor nitrogenous nor mineral, are found. 



CENTESIMAL COMPOSITION OF THE ASHES OF EACH PART OF THE 
PLANT, AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE SAME. 



Phosphoric Acid . . . ' 

Sulphuric Acid 

Chlorine 

Potash 

Soda 

Lime 

Magnesia 

Iron 

Silex 

Carbonic Acid and Waste . . 



Entire 
Plant. 



7.17 
3.81 
1.35 
4.41 
8.20 

12.90 
0.00 
0.51 

54.75 
0.18 



Leaves. 



3.97 
3.21 
1.04 
1.23 

0.78 
13.78 

5.04 

0.40 
03.70 

0.13 



100.00100.00 



Tassels. 


Ears. 


10.01 


33.50 


0.13 


3.58 


2.73 


3.52 


7.88 


27.11 


10.37 


21.30 


11.87 


3.40 


15.03 


7.04 



Upper 
Part 

Stalk. 



0.11 

35.83 

0.03 



trace. 
0.34 
0.09 



9.07 
5.G1 
2.15 

14.01 
12.57 
10.29 
10.52 

2.08 
29.83 

3.27 



Middle. 



Lower. 



14.02 
8.05 

trace. 
2.41 
8.39 

14.31 
8.73 
0.03 

41.37 
1.49 



100.00100.00100.00100.00 



7.17 
3.81 
1.35 
4.41 
8.26 

12.96 
6.60 
0.51 

54.75 
0.18 



100.00 



The above table shows that the ears are the richest in 
phosphoric acid and potash. These also contain the largest 
percentage of soda, the least of lime and silex. As to the 
distribution of each mineral element in the different parts of 
the plant, it is necessary, in order to study it thoroughly, to 
enter into a more detailed and separate examination. Phos- 
phoric acid or phosphorus plays an important part in agricul- 
ture, not because it is more indispensable to vegetation than 
several other elements, but because nature has not distributed 
it with so much j^rofusion in all lands or in the atmosphere as 
certain other elements that on that account are considered sec- 
ondary. Indeed, there is not any one element in vegetation 
of any greater importance than another, and if any person 
judges otherwise it is because he places himself at the point of 
view of an agriculturist who, having need to produce certain 
crops of a special kind, needs to accumulate such elements as 
enter specially into their organization. Therefore, in order to 
obtain abundant food, in order to produce with rapidity do- 
mestic animals, whose organs require much phosphorus, it is 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 45 

necessary to seek methods for increasing the supply of phos- 
phates, more or less assimilable, that the plants may find in 
the bed where their roots develop. To indicate the sources of 
the supply, whether in the residuum of factories or of the 
household, or in the numerous repositories, has been one of the 
greatest services rendered in modern times to agriculture by 
chemistry and geology. But there our knowledge ends. We 
are entirely ignorant as to how the phosphorus distributes itself 
in the vegetable, by what processes it penetrates and circu- 
lates, and accumulates in certain organs, or exactly what these 

ns are. 

As to the relative distribution of these elements, the fol- 
lowing tables show, as far as concerns maize fodder intended 
for green preservation by ensilage : 

PHOSPHORIC ACID. 

Amount in each part. Proportion in different parts. 

Leaves, Grammes, 0.177 42. 9G 

Tassel " 0.007 1.70 

Ears " 0.132 32.04 

Upper part stalk " 0.020 485 

Middle part stalk " 0.026. 631 

Lower part stalk " 0.050 12.14 



Whole plant, dry " ■ 0.412 100.00 

SULPHURIC ACID. 

The role of sulphur in vegetation is nearly unknown. All 
that we know is that it is absolutely necessary. It is generally 
found in less proportion than phosphorus ; in maize as 88 to 
180. 

Quantity in each part. Proportion in different parts. 

Leaves Grammes, 0.144 65.75 

Tassel " 0.005 2.28 

Ears " 0.014 6.39 

' Upper part stalk " 0.009 4.11 

Middle part stalk " 0.016 7.30 

Lower part stalk " 0.031 14.17 



Whole plant, dry " 0.219 100.00 



46 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 



CHLORINE. 

By the conclusive experiments of Prince de Salon-Horst- 
mar, we know that chlorine is indispensable to the regular 
operations of the different phases of vegetation, but the most 
complete obscurity rests upon its real action. 

Quantity in each part. Proportion in different parts. 

Leaves Grammes, 0.047 60.26 

Tassel " 0.002 2.56 

Ears " 0.014 17.95 

Upper part stalk " 0.009 11.54 

Middle « " 0.006 7.69 

Lower " " traces traces 



Whole plant dry " 0.078 100.00 



POTASH. 

Berthier's saying, "No plant without potash," has become 
a maxim. 

Quantity in each part. Proportion in different parts. 

Leaves Grammes, 0.055 21.94 

Tassel " 0.006 2.27 

Ears " 0.107 42.29 

Upper part stalk...'. " 0.036 14.23 

Middle " " 0.041 10.20 

Lower " " 0.008 3.17 



Whole plant dry « 0.253 100.00 

SODA IN MAIZE. 

In the whole plant dry, 0.475 grammes, of which two- 
thirds is accumulated in the leaves, and one-sixth in the ears. 

LIME IN MAIZE. 

Lime has been considered necessary to plant growth from- 
a very ancient period. More than four-fifths are found in the 
leaves, only two per cent in the ear, and the quantity in- 
creases in descending the stalk. 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 47 



MAGNESIA IN MAIZE. 

The role of magnesia in vegetation has been but little 
studied. There is no doubt, however, after experiments made 
in Germany, that its presence is indispensable to plants. Two- 
thirds of it is found in the leaves, and the remainder equally 
divided in the other five parts of the plant. 

IRON IN MAIZE. 

Iron is evidently of great importance to the life of ani- 
mals who are nourished by vegetation ; as with sulphur, chlo- 
rine, soda, lime, and magnesia, the greatest accumulation is in 
the leaves. But it is a noticeable fact that it is absent from 
the ear, which would seem to explain the opinion of physicians 
as to the insufficiency of corn-meal for exclusive human food. 
As to maize harvested green in order to be fed to cattle after 
ensilage, the lack of it in the ear is equalized by its presence 
in the other parts of the plant. 

SILICA. 

It is probable that all silica enters the organs of vegeta- 
tion in the soluble state. The quantity found is very con- 
siderable. 

Quantity in each part. Proportion in different part*. 

Leaves Grammes, 2.843 90.45 



Tassel 

Ears 

Upper part stalk . 
Middle " 
Lower " 



0.0'26 0.82 

0.001 0.03 

0.042 1.33 

0.0&4 2.67 

0.147 4.70 



Whole plant dry " 3.143 100.00 

Thus the stalk contains only about one-tenth part of the 
amount contained in the leaves, which contain 90 per cent of 
the whole plant. 



48 CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 

INTRODUCTION OF ENSILAGE IN THE UNITED 

STATES. 

By Mr. Francis Morris, 

OF OAKLAND MANOR, HOWARD COUNTY, MARYLAND. 

I have been requested to give my experience in growing 
com fodder, preserving it in silos, or trenches, and feeding it 
to stock. 

In the early summer of 1876, I received from France a 
newspaper containing an account of the plan they had adopted 
of raising maize, or Indian corn, cutting the same when in tas- 
sel, and burying it in trenches, covering it with earth, and 
feeding it out to their stock in the following winter or spring. 
This statement induced me to make the experiment. I sowed, 
on the 1st of August, 1876, about five acres, in drills three feet 
apart, and about a bushel of corn to the acre. This was worked 
twice with a cultivator, and was in tassel in the first days of 
October. We cut the same with a mowing-machine, earned 
it in wagons to the feed-cutter, cut it up in one-inch pieces, 
and added to it an amount of wheat straw, cut up in the same 
manner, equal to one-fifth of the corn fodder. I had three 
silos bricked up inside a stone barn. The silos were about ten 
feet deep and four feet wide, and twenty-four feet long. The 
fodder was well packed down by trampling while the mix- 
ture was put away, and then covered with boards with large 
and heavy stones upon them. After the weights had pressed 
it down very considerably, they were taken off, the boards 
covered with straw, and* then with clay; the latter were 
thoroughly packed, and the whole was made a perfect protec- 
tion against the oxygen of the atmosphere penetrating through 
the clay or earth. The first silo was opened for use on Christ- 
mas, and I fed all my milking cows with the same. Two of 
them refused to eat their portion, and when they left their 
stalls the other cows ate it; and from that day I have 



CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 49 

never fed it to an animal that has refused it — horses, mules, 
oxen, cows, sheep, and pigs will all leave any other feed and 
eat this by choice. 

In the year 1877, from want of personal attention and 
from a very dry time, my corn fodder was not as large a crop 
as it should have been, but it was sufficient to feed nearly a 
thousand head of stock for over two months ; it was equally 
good in quality as it was in 1876. 

For this year I have more than double the quantity of 
this fodder. I have made and filled a very large silo out of 
doors, which will probably hold from fifty to seventy-five 
tons, besides filling the three silos in my barn. I have a very 
large herd of stock dependent on my corn fodder for their 
winter feed, and I feel every confidence that it will furnish 
me all the feed I require. 

In a very long experience in raising stock, I have found 
corn fodder preserved as above stated the best food for milk- 
ing cows that I ever used. It is equal if not superior to 
June grass, and its cultivation is so easy, its preservation so 
inexpensive, that to-day no one can estimate its advantage to 
the agriculturist. The average hay crop of this State (New 
York) is not equal to one ton per acre, and every farmer 
knows what a costly crop it is to raise, to cure, and to preserve 
after it is raised, while our Indian corn crop will grow and 
flourish and tassel with the most ordinary care and tillage. 
Twenty-five tons to the acre, with a light dressing of barnyard 
manure, and working it twice with a cultivator, is a small crop. 
Add to the barnyard manure a dressing of guano, and more 
than double that quantity can be raised to the acre — I am al- 
most afraid to state the quantity that can be raised per acre. 
Suppose, however, we put the produce down to twenty-five 
tons per acre — and every one who has raised corn sowed broad- 
cast will recognize that this is a small crop — what will be the 
result in this good State of New York if one-tenth of her 
arable land is used in this way? Where is the stock to feed 



5Q CULTURE AND ENSILAGE OF MAIZE. 

upon the new supply of food % It is not here. We should 
have to double the number of our horses, cows, sheep, and all 
our stock, and after we have done that we should have to 
double them again. In fact, the amount of stock that could 
be maintained is so great that we should be wholly indepen- 
dent of the West, for the most liberal supply of beef and mut- 
ton will be supplied by the cultivation of our own lands. The 
beef that we shall have when we make a proper use of pre- 
served green food will be very different from the beef fatted 
on slops procured from the whiskey stills of Chicago and other 
cities of the West. The old adage, " No cattle no corn," is 
fully verified by our wheat production in this State. The 
lands are all so indifferent in quality that he must be a bold 
farmer who now sows a field of wheat ; but the corn-fodder, 
which it is now proposed to raise, will give such a yearly 
amount of manure as will enable every farmer to get a wheat 
crop of thirty to forty bushels of wheat to the acre, and suc- 
ceed that by good clover. After that is done, his progress to 
a maximum yield of cereals will be very rapid, and I have 
every confidence that the crops of this country, blessed with 
its tropical sun, will exceed in value and importance that of 
any other agricultural country that can be named. 

Francis Morris. 

December, 1878. 

Xotk. — Mr. Morris haa increased his silos to a capacity of 1,000 tons. 



RECENT IMPROVEMENTS IN PLOWS. 

The improved American plow holds a high rank among 
the implements of modern husbandly, not only at home, but 
in the foreign market. In form, materials and construction, it 
appears to be all that it is capable of being, and yet there are 
constant developments of new points of excellence. The most 
obvious improvements within the last few years consist in the 
use of hard metal, first for the edge, and later for the entire 
wearing surface. Chilling the edges and point of the share 
and the bottom of the land-side, was the first step in the line 
of progress, made about thirty years ago, but within the last 
ten years attention has been directed to the importance of re- 
ducing the friction of the mold-board. Hardened steel was in- 
troduced for this purpose, and is still recognized as the best ma- 
terial where soil is wholly free from grit, but it was found that 
a chilled surface of cast iron, in combination with the chilled 
share and land-side, was more easily and economically kept 
m repair in all soils containing grit. The well-known process 
ol chilling first resorted to, consisted in running the molten 
metal against the surface of cold iron. This method, while 
rendering the metal harder, made it correspondingly brittle, 
and required great care in the mixture of the iron to make the 
chill penetrate uniformly. This plan also required a method 
of annealing, sometimes with hot water, or by building fires 
on the back of the mold-board, and sometimes by covering 
with heated sand. 

Later improvements in mixing metal have been success- 
fully made, so as to secure entire hardness throughout, without 
the chilling process. Plows made in this way are usually 
known by appropriate names, such as " Adamant," &c. We 
learn through a large plow-making establishment in New 



52 ULCENT IMPROVEMENTS IN PLOWS. 

York (the New York Plow Company), that long experience 
has taught them that steel in a certain condition will mix with 
melted pig iron, and with the addition of certain chemicals 
will make a homogeneous metal by pouring it into molds at 
the right time, which time is ascertained by means of its color. 
In this way the result is "hardness, uniformity and strength." 

In former years, plows made of cast iron were so rough 
that farmers were severely tried in keeping them bright. As 
plows have grown harder, the polish is more difficult to pro- 
duce, as well as more durable, and on the metal here referred 
to, is said to suffer little from corrosion. As the friction of 
the plow is equal to about thirty-five per cent of the whole 
force of the draught, every expedient to reduce it is important 
to the plowman. 

A still better improvement in this direction was recently 
achieved by the introduction of a reversible point in the share, 
which thus becomes self-sharpening, and enables the farmer to 
keep the bottom of the plow level, there- 
by avoiding the friction that arises from a 
projection of the point of the share below 
the general level. It has been found that 
the effect of a sharp point is to sharpen 
the wing also. Among other improve- 
ments is the setting of the beam in the 
centre instead of one side of the line of 
resistance, which is adjustable at the standard so as to produce 
a balance, avoiding side draughts. — From Iron Age. 

N B. — All these improvements are contained in the 
Adamant Plows of the New York Plow Company. 




53 



ADDENDA 

To accompany "ENSILAGE OF MAIZE," by J. B. BROWN, 
55 Beekman Street, New York. 



EXTRACT FROM JOURNAL DE L' AGRICULTURE, 

October 19, 1878. 

M. A. Goffart, desirous of making known the remarkable results that he has ob- 
tained from the cultivation and preservation of maize-forage, invited to his celebrated 
farm at Burtin, on Oct. 12, many agriculturists who are interested in this important 
question. A hundred accepted his invitation, and they received at Burtin the most 
generous hospitality. Among those present we should mention the Prince Catacuzene, 
a large agriculturist of Southern Russia and Russian Commissioner to the Exposition ; 
M. Fernandez de Neda, Commissioner from Spain ; M. Rob Runeberg, Commissioner 
from Finland ; M. Deutch, large agriculturist in Hungary ; M. Boitel, Inspector-Gen- 
eral of Agriculture of France ; M. J. A. Barral, Secretary of National Society of Agri- 
culture of France; and the officers of eight other agricultural societies of France. 
There were also a director of a school-farm, a director of a penal colony, proprietors 
01 estates in different parts of France, mayors of cities, manufacturers of agricultural 
machinery ; also Monsieur de Fontenailles, a distinguished silvi-cultivator (forest tree 
cultivator, a branch of industry now attracting much attention in Europe, as a re- 
medy for drought). We left Paris in the morning by special train to Nouan-le-Fuze- 
lier. A few minutes' ride by carriage and we are at Burtin, where a magnificent ban- 
quet, prepared under an elegant tent, awaits the guests. The first toast is to M. Gof- 
fart, the last to Sologne, " too little known, and which the skillful pioneers of the 
thirty years last past have so happily transformed." After the banquet came the 
more important business. The operation of gathering and ensilaging the maize had 
been under way for several days. One of the silos was already full, the second was 
being filled. The gigantic maize is brought from the field in wagons, which stop just 
behind the feed-cutter. The stalks are fed to the machine, which is run by a steam- 
engine. They are cut into disks of one centimetre long (about 4-10 inch), and car- 
ried by an elevator above the wall of the silo, and fall within it. A man spreads the 
layer, a woman tramples around the silo. When it is full it will be covered with 
plank, which will be loaded with large stones about 400 kilogrammes (about 900 lbs.) 
per square metre (about 10| sqnare feet). It will be perfectly preserved, without fer- 
mentation, until the time when it is needed for use. In the month of May we took 
from the last silo at Burtin the last layer of maize. It had the same temperature that 
it had at the time of ensilage, and it presented not a trace of any deterioration. 
There is no doubt that the result will be the same this year. All the agriculturists 



54 

■who have followed exactly the directions of M. Goffart Lave obtained the same re- 
sult, and their numerous testimonials bear witness to it. (For full description of M. 
Goft'art's process, Bee Ensilage of Maize, &c.) There arc three silos for maize, and one 
for oats, cut green, which was filled in the Spring, and which has been fed out to 
the working animals. 

M. Goffart has to-day 68 horned cattle in his stables, six horses, and one mule. 
With his resources of maize fodder, he can not only support for seven months 150 
horned cattle, but also put them in condition for the butcher, upon 32 hectares (about 
79 acres). After having visited the fields of maize, the numerous guests departed, de- 
lighted with what they had seen. 



THE CULTIVATION AND PRESERVATION OF MAIZE-FODDER. 

Letter from Monsieur A. Goffart, April 28, 1878. 

My last silo, more than 300 cubic metres in capacity, will be emptied by May 
10th. You will remember how niy frosted maize last September had to be cut as 
quickly as possible, when it had only attained two-thirds of its growth. The frost, had 
completely stopped its growth, and the blackened stalks would have fallen to the 
ground at the first rain. I cut it, as I always do, one centimetre (about 4-10 inch) 
long, and I ensilaged it without any addition of salt or straw or cut hay. The preser- 
vation has been, and is still, perfect; not a kilogramme of it has been wasted. Hav- 
ing been cut when so very young, it has produced a very tender fodder, the nutritive 
power of which was evidently superior to that of my previous ensilage. Tho question 
arises, whether this increase of nutritive value compensates for the loss of weight in 
a crop cut prematurely. I do not think it does. It would need to be 30 per cent, at 
least superior to that of maize cut when the ear is in the milky state, for the loss of 
weight is at least in that proportion. 

Comparative experiments and analyses of our skillful chemists will soon enlighten 
us on this important subject. 

Another very remarkable effect upon ensilage by frosted vegetation is this : while 
maize ensilaged in ordinary condition takes on the alcoholic fermentation in twelve to 
fifteen hours after contact with the air, the frosted maize required two, and some- 
times three days. The farmer, therefore, need not be alarmed at these premature 
frosts, but should be ready to ensilage his crop immediately upou their appearance. I 
find that the tall Mexican corn becomes exceedingly hard, and quickly dulls the 
knives of the cutting machine. I shall not use that kind again. 

Feb. 1, 1879. — I now give you the facts which I have gamed from the experience of 
the past year, at my farm at Burtin. I find that I was mistaken when- 1 advised that 
the silo should be filled as quickly as possible. The shrinkage or subsidence which 
takes place in the first few days of the compression, is so considerable that the upper 
half of our silos are soon empty, and therefore we lose one-half of the capacity, and 
the expense of establishing them is just doubled. I now advise that the silos should 
not be filled too quickly. In recharging a silo that has been commenced with a layer 



of fresh maize of fifty centimetres (20 inches) each day, you will keep sufficiently ahead 
of the fermentation during the ensilage, and the spontaneous shrinkage will have been . 
sufficient at the end of eight or ten days, of daily refilling, so that the subsequent subsi- 
dence will not exceed one-tenth of the total height. My silos, filled this Autumn, are 
move than five metres high, and only show a void at the top of half a metre. By kav- 
iiiM, two or several silos of a certain capacity, the work can go on continuously. Some 
farmers have ensilaged this year 100,000 to 120,000 kilogrammes per day (220,000 to 
2tJ4.000 lbs.). 

My maize is cut in the field by women, with sickles. They have great skill in the 
use of that implement, and eight women will cut easily one hectare a day (2£ acres). 
They receive 15 francs per hectare, and therefore earn about two francs a day each. 1 
found a difficulty in roofing over my three united silos, on account of the great size of 
the group thus formed. On this account I would prefer to unite only two silos, and in- 
crease the length, while preserving the other dimensions, so as to obtain the same 
capacity. Something would be gained also by replacing the semicircular ends with 
arcs of a circle of a greater radius, which would diminish the expense of roofing, and 
increase the capacity, without, I think, endangering the preservation of the maize. 

The proximity of the silos to the stables is important, as to economy of labor, but 
it is an advantage sometimes to put them at a distance, as the land may be more suit 
able. The solidity and the smooth working of the cutting-machine are of great im- 
portance. The French machine, with eight horse-power, will cut 100,000 to 120,000 
kilogrammes per day, in pieces of one centimetre long (4-10 inch), and costs 800 francs. 
If water invades a silo, whether it enters from without or from compression upon 
maize that is very wet at time of ensilage, it should not be wasted ; cattle will drink 
that kind of grass-soup with great avidity. 

When I opened, last October, the silo in which I had enclosed in May about 60,- 

000 kilogrammes of green rye, I found it darker in color than usual, and it exhaled a 
disagreeable odor, indicating the presence of butyric acid. Although this odor is dis- 
agreeable to man, it does not cause to animals the same repugnance, and my rye was 
eaten entirely, and without the least hesitation. Never before had my ensilaged rye 
presented tins kiud of alteration. The alcoholic fermentation, though less than m 
maize, had always before developed sufficiently to make it agreeable, both in taste 
and smell, to both man and beast. 

There was, therefore, an abnormal effect, a special alteration, which it is import- 
ant to avoid, since, when it passes certain limits, it will disgust the animals and also 
injure their health, if we persist in feeding it to them. At the time this rye was cut 
down for ensilage it had been fallen for a long time, and the foot for more than eight 
inches had yellowed ; it was already undergoing the commencement of decomposition. 
To prevent this I used salt iu considerable quantity, but it had not served to neutral- 
ize the effect of the evil ; the butyric fermentation hail already invaded the ensilaged 
vegetation, and this fermentation remained, notwithstanding the presence of the salt. 

1 believe, however, that in this case salt was useful, suspending by its antiseptic- 
qualities the decomposition, and assisting to excite the appetite of the animals, who, 
perhaps, without the salt, would have refused it, since the more important condiment, 
alcohol, was absent. 

I ensilaged in September several wagon loads of clover that was fully ripe and 
had fallen for several weeks, and though I took special care with it, and compressed 
it very energetically, and mixed salt with it, viz., 3 kilogrammes to the thousand, on 
discharging the silo at the end of December, I found a blackened mass, viscous, and 
nearly insipid. 



56 



This ensilage was entirely eaten by the animals without any aversion, but it 
quickly contracted butyric acid, and if it had been exposed to the air for a consider- 
able time the animals would have manifested an increasing aversion, and finished by 
refusing to eat it. I have frequently observed this in ensilaging -whole maize. I give 
this explanation with hesitation, because so much obscurity still rests upon the science 
of fermentations. When the butyric fermentation permeates an ensilaged mass, and 
this mass is exposed to the air, does there not form, to the detriment of the nitrogen 
contained in that mass, a liberation of butyrate of ammonia, which impoverishes the 
alimentary matter and finishes by taking away all its nutritive power ? The animals 
thereupon refuse to take into their stomachs a food which is fictitious, its nourishment 
being exhausted. 

Vegetation which has been attacked by butyric acid, before cutting, in the field, 
needs also to be covered and compressed at once, or the air that is not expelled will 
increase the activity of the pre-existing acid. Prickly comfrey, notwithstanding great 
pains taken, I have found refractory to alcoholic fermentation, and when exposed to 
the air quickly becomes invaded by butyric acid, requiring quick consumption in 
order to save it. While this plant is a very excellent fodder, it is well known to be 
poor in saccharine matter. Therefore, alcoholic fermentation may fail in two cases : 
when sugar is not abundant in the ensilaged material; when a considerable altera- 
tion existing at the time of ensilage prevents its development. 



EXTRACT FROM A LETTER OF M. De BEAUQUESNE, 

One op the Most Distinguished Agriculturists of France. 

December 17, 1878. 

" I am preparing a series of articles on ensilage. 1 send you the part relative to the 
cost. I have a feed-cutter, with three knives, cost 800 francs ($160). I tie the stalks 
in bundles of about 10 kilogrammes, using for that one of the stalks. Two men take 
the maize from the unloaders and place it on a narrow table prolonging the box of the 
cutter; another man passes it along to the man that feeds it to the machine. I have 
two men in the silo. Thus I make the cost : 

Five laborers at 35 cents $1 75 

One mechanic at cutter 50 

One engineer 70 

Coal, 330 lbs 1 50 

Oil 15 

Use of engine 2 00 

Use of feed-cutter 1 00 

Incidentals 40 

$8 00 



57 

" Ten bundles pass easily per minute, making225 lbs. or 13,500 lbs. per hour ; but 
as there is time lost in oiling and examining knives and removing them to sharpen, I 
only reckon 0,000 lbs. per hour as regular result. This gives a net cost of 20 cents per 
2,250 lbs. Ce ti'est rien. I have not tried with a horse-power, but I have it from a 
neighbor that it costs 60 cents for 2,250 lbs. This is still endurable. I am about to 
make an experiment to determine the comparative nutritive value of hay and ensi- 
lage. One of my milch cows has fed a month on the latter. I believe that its nutri- 
tive value is more than one-third, and I shall not be surprised if 220 lbs. of maize are 
worth a( least 110 lbs. of hay, and probably more. 

" I have just let a farm on shares, and the party stipulated that I should let to him 
my steam-engine and feed-cutter, because there was a silo, and it was only for that 
reason that he took the place. I say frankly that I believe we have made a mistake 
in our successive plantings of maize, in order to feed it green. It would do better to 
harvest, it all at the same time, and ensilage it all. There would be more economy, 
and the maize that we should use, after being three weeks in the silo, would be more 
nourishing. I shall do it so next season. The later planting often gives bad results, 
and the ground is not so easily worked." 

Monsieur Goffart remarks upon this letter ; " My ensilages the past year reached 
more than 132,000 lbs. per day, and the cost per ton was 25 per cent, less than his 
figures, which can be explained by the fact that my machinery Avas more powerful 
than his. 

" I agree with M. de Beauquesne as to the relative value of ensilaged maize and 
hay. Ensilaged maize at Burtin is worth in nutritive power one-half that of hay ; 
but our hay in Sologne is poor, and in other countries the relative value of maize may 
decline to one-third. 

"M. de Beauquesne, after giving in detail the different expenses of ensilage, 
adds, 'it is nothing.' I will go farther than he, and I will say, this expense consti- 
tutes a considerable saving. The expense of cutting and ensilaging a million of kilo- 
grammes of maize is, at most, a thousand francs. Instead of proceeding, from day 
to day, to cut up the maize for the day's sustenance of your animals, you prepare in 
15 days the food for 200 days ; you have put your maize in such a condition that the 
stable-man has no other trouble but to fill his basket in the silo and empty it in the 
manger. Here are some figures in proof of this statement. 

" On a farm in the valley of the Loire are fattened each winter a certain number 
of animals, with beets, hay, and oil meal. Twelve auimals ou this diet require the 
steady work of a strong laborer, Avho washes and cuts the beets and chops the hay 
or straw. This laborer is paid 45 cents per day. He receives, therefore, 3 J cent3 per 
head. At Burtin, with the ensilage at three steps from the stable, two men, at the 
same wages, take care of 80 animals, making a daily expense of Is cents per head. The 
difference in favor of Burtin is more than 10 francs per day, and this saving is more 
than double the sum expended for ensilage. 

" The last paragraph of the letter, relative to the advantage of feeding only en- 
silaged maize, even in summer, agrees perfectly with my ideas. I wrote in 1875, in 
oue of my pamphlets, 'It should never be lost sight of that to cut, and to euailage 
in a way to obtain a good fermentation, is to increase enormously the alimentary 
value of maize ; and I ask if, even in autumn, when the fresh maize is abundant, it 
would not be an advantage to pass it through the silo.' 

"In order to settle this question careful and intelligent experiments are necessary, 
aud no one is better able to resolve it with authority than M. do Beauquesne." 



58 

THE SYSTEM OF ENSILAGE. 
l;y .!. I'.. Brown. 

Any improvement in the methods by which the nutritive power of vegetation 
can be prolonged is of greater importance to the fanner who produces it, and to the 
nation that consumes it than any increase of production. Population in time adjusts 
itself to the average production of the land, hut preservation of crops mitigates the 
alternation of low prices and high prices, and insures regular food to animals and men, 
thereby increasing the energy and happiness of the commonwealth. The country 
that does not possess methods and ample facilities for storing food is subject to 
famines, without regard to the average proliiicness of the soil. In England, in the 
12th, 13th and 14th centuries, there occurred a famine once in fourteen years. A crop 
which can be produced with the most certainty, and preserved indefinitely with little 
expense, either for human or bovine^subsistence, is the best security against dearth or 
irregularity in the supply of food. There is no crop that can be so safely reckoned 
upon by farmers as the stalks of cereals, and now we have arrived at a method 
whereby they can be indefinitely preserved in a condition that is not only nutritive 
and healthy, but attractive to the taste of all grazing animals, and at the same time 
it is a method of preservation that is certain and economical. By means of this pro- 
cess the number of cattle that can be supported upon any farm can be as much in- 
creased, as the yield of nutritive matter in the stalks of cereals is greater than that 
in the stalks of the grasses that can be grown upon the same space. 

The comparative value of these vegetables will become a matter for discussion, 
but I have no doubt that it can be easily proven to be twenty times greater. The 
farmers of Orange county requires six acres for summer and wiuter support of one 
cow by hay and grazing, of which seven-twelfths is fed in a dry state. Twenty-five 
tons of green corn-stalks will support, in better average condition, two cows for a 
year, with 68 pounds per day. But it is not difficult to double this quantity of stalks 
per acre. One-half the manure derived from feeding green fodder, carefully pre- 
served, will keep up the land. A mature or fattening animal removes none of the 
constituents of its food that are valuable for manure. Therefore, the most fertile 
farms of the Eastern States are, as a rule, those that are devoted to stock or dairy 
farming. Cattle are not only the distributing reservoirs of vegetation, but they also 
may be made to increase the sources of supply. 

The preservation of green crops in pits called silos has been successfully, con- 
tinuously, and profitably practiced in France by Auguste Goffart and his disciples 
since 1873, and in the United States by Francis Morris, of Maryland, since 1876. It 
is no longer an experiment either as to its practicability nor as to its profit. Either 
for the mechanic, with a single cow, or for small and large farmers it is proportion- 
ately for all a most excellent system of feeding cattle of all sorts, including horses, 
sheep and hogs. 

The United States came very near to being the theatre of this invention. In 
1875, Mr. C. W. Mills, of New Jersey, had made an experiment to the extent of fifty 
acres iu hybridizing Southern and Northern corn, by planting them in alternate 
rows. The result was that the Northern corn ripened first and was removed, while 
the Southern was still in luxuriant growth, averaging fifteen feet high. Not having 
heard of Mr. Goffart's discovery, but which had already been reported in the French 
Agricultural Journals, he did not think to cut it tine, but buried it whole in small 



59 

pits on the hillside, six feet deep, with, about four feet of dirt over it, trampling it 
thoroughly. When he opeued these pits in March his cattle were furiously hungry 
for it — sweet, alcoholic and juicy — they chased the cart, and would leave any other 
food untouched ; it was fed out as fast as possible, being drawn up from the trenches 
with grappling fork and pulley, but of course each trench being entirely open to the 
air, it soon grew putrid and probably one-third or one-half of each pit was spoiled. 
The next year, 1876, he did nothing in this direction ; but in 1877, still without 
having heard of Mr. Gou'art, or Mr. Morris, he made a complete success, and devised 
the most simple method of ensilage that has yet been suggested in either country. 
He made a wailed trench in the floor of his barn, or rather underneath it, 40 feet 
long by 12 feet wide and 17 feet deep, with plastered sides and bottom. 

He uses only the Southern Horse Tooth Corn, which grows large and tall, and at 
its maturity is very sweet. To cut it down he needs a narrow mowing machine with a 
dropper. To cut it up he has two ensilage cutters, driven by steam power, cutting 4-10 
inch ; the cut stalks fall directly into the silos, and are spread and trampled by men. 
The silos are filled about three feet per day, so that the wilting causes much shrink- 
age ; wooden curbing is fitted to the walls, so that sufficient fodder can be piled 
above them to fill the masonry when it is shrunken, the mass is carefully levelled 
and the cover is put on, which is two inch plank, tongsed and grooved, fitting 
loosely withiu the walls, and battened in sections of three to four feet ; the battens 
are put on with screws and project, so that each section is fitted together. This 
cover is laid directly on the cut stalks, without any hay or straw being used. Sacks 
of meal are laid upon this cover with care, as to equalizing the pressure, so that it 
may sink uniformly. Sacks of earth or other weights would do as well, but it is a 
convenient place to store the meal, which is fed out at the same time. There is not 
enough steam arising from this mass of cut, green, juicy fodder to stain or moisten 
the sacks. 

In removing for feeding no door is required, as the ensilage is taken from the top 
by basket and pulley, one section of the cover being removed at a time, without 
loosening the rest ; the perpendicular contents of each section are taken out and put 
into bins, to remain 24 hours (in winter). The handling is most conveniently done 
with a hop-fork. When it is first taken out it is as sweet as when it was cut in the 
field and of a tawny, green color. As the acetic and alcoholic fermentation attack it 
in the bins it becomes darker in color and hot, so that the hand can hardly be held in 
it, smoking and vinous flavored, with a slightly acid taste. The cattle, of all kinds, 
prefer it when m this condition to any food that they are ever permitted to taste. It 
is possible they might prefer a first-rate mushmelon or a sweet apple, but they would 
not thrive upon them as they do on good ensilage, eveu Avhen they have nothing else. 
One and a half cubic feet for each cow daily (about 70 lbs.) is a full ration for a large 
animal, or one cubic foot per week for sheep. A silo ten feet wide, ten feet long, and 
ten feet deep will keep two cows a year, or four cows, if they are pastured half the 
year. It will hold 20 to 25 tons. 

The great variety of food that can be provided for animals under this system is a 
very useful feature of it. With different silos, not only different kinds of stalks of 
cereals, but different mixtures, and for that matter different degrees of sourness, it 
desired, can be provided for the farm-yard table. The experience of three years has 
satisfied Mr. Mills that he can no longer afford to raise and preserve grass, either by 
drying or by ensilage, not evea clover ; and at this time, September, 1880, on his 300 
acres, with 100 h*ad of splendid stock, including horses, there is not a pound of hay. 
He has enlarged his silo to be 80 feet long instead of 40. 



60 

He feeds to his milking cows about four quarts per day of meal, half corn, half 
wheat middlings, or some oatmeal, but no rye. 

On some acres in the State of New York, there are ninety tons of stalks, as can 
be proven by avoirdupois aud arithmetic. 

Wherever a silo of brick is elevated above the surface, it will be better to bank 
up around it as a sure protection against heat and cold. 

The value of ensilage is undoubtedly greater than that of any green fodder that 
has not passed through the silo, because it is better adapted and prepared for the 
digestive organs of the animals. The result is that their stomachs are Bmaller and 
they do not have a perpetual diarrhoea. 

Salt is not important, except to make it still more palatable. Some people salt 
their melons, others do not. 

The cost of cutting 4-10 inch with a large machine aud plenty of power, is not 
more than 25 cents per ton, and there is great economy in making one job of it in- 
stead of going to the field and cutting down aud hauling a single load at a time, and 
it is cheaper as well as healthier to cut up the whole crop at one time, put it in silos, 
and feed it from the silos, even in summer, than to haul it from the field as wanted. 

The corn-plant is in perfect condition only a few days to each crop, and it is 
exceedingly important to cut it at precisely the right stage of growth. I am satisfied 
that the carelessness of the farmiug community on this head has caused a great deal 
of mischief to themselves and to the people that they feed. 

The perennial grasses have but little sugar, and can be fed at any time, but 
better milk, butter and cheese can be made when they are young and juicy than 
when they are dried ; but with cereals, which are annual, there is another law. It is 
that the dextrine, which largely composes these is alkaloid until it has ripened into 
sugar, by means of or at the time of tassel ing or flowering. This process requires air 
and sun, and much broadcast corn is fed while unpalatable and unhealthy, both to 
the animal that eats it and to the human animal that eats and drinks the product. 

To ferment the green food before giving it to the cattle, instead of fermenting it 
in their bellies, is both humane and economical. Dry stalks steamed are not to be 
compared to this fodder, because the nutritious value has gone into the grain and the 
sugar has been chauged iuto starch. The error that stood so many years in the path 
of Mons. Goffart was the idea that there must be a partial dessication. On the con- 
trary, all drying must be avoided. The corn-plant does not remain full of juice more 
than two weeks after tasselliug, and wherever fading has taken place the air has 
already entered the cells and acetic fermentation has commenced. When cut in that 
condition the ensilage will be sour, smell like a tau vat, and taste like pickles pre- 
served in manufactured vinegar. 

The Earth Silo has been more extensively used by Mr. Frauds Morris than by 
any one else in this country. His soil in Maryland consists of clay for a foot or two, 
and a kind of rotten rock beneath. He uses oxen and scraper and makes a trench or 
pit hyi feet deep, 1% feet wide on bottom, and 11 feet wide on top, and any length 
desired. A width of 11 feet on top prevents danger of arching. At this slope the sides 
remain firm, and he does not plaster the face. The surface-water is drained from it. 
In filling it the sides are lined with straw standing, so that the ensilage will slip 
down, the bottom floored with plank, the top rounded up and covered with a thin 
layer of long straw, the thinner the better ; above that a sheet of tarred roofing felt, 
and above that the earth is piled on two feet deep. The cut stalks are pounded in 
and rolled with a heavy roller frequently at first. Vigilance is the price of safety with 
an earth silo. He has recently built more of them, all radiating from a centre where 



61 

the cutter stands , so that he cau fill all without moving his machinery. He paid 
S^bO for his cutter, and can cut teu tous per hour with a six-horse engine. 

The stalks are hauled from the field in advance in the morning in order to keep 
the machine going. He still uses two masonry silos in the stone barn, which were the 
first pits built for the purpose in this country — those, however, are also covered with 
dirt and compressed until they have ceased to settle. Mr. Morris thinks very much 
of ensilage as a forerunner of great wheat crops. He says, " Clover, with its long tap 
roots drawing sustenance from the subsoil, when plowed under, and barn-yard manure 
in abundance, will keep laud strong for wheat and other exhaustive crops, such as 
cannot now be raised profitably in the Eastern States. 

" The trench should have a shed over it, or a shed thatched with straw. Water 
should be kept from the cut-up maize, as it would doubtless injure its quality, if not 
destroy it. 

" Maize or Indian corn requires from forty-five to sixty days to ripen it into tassel, 
and therefore it can be safely sown up to the 15th of July. If the land is in <*ood 
condition, it will yield twenty tons to the acre ; it requires a ton a month for each 
cow, and all animals will improve and do well upon it. By the use of superphosphates 
the crop can be doubled, but this is a matter subject to the will of the farmer. Ten 
acres of maize will feed thirty cows during the season that they cannot feed out of 
doors, and will furnish a quantity of manure to give a wheat or corn crop. The ad- 
vantage of this crop is so great that it must change the agriculture of every corn- 
growing country. Cattle and sheep will be raised on every farm to an extent hereto- 
fore not thought of. Wheat, to-day, by all our best farmers, is followed by clover, 
the clover is cut and made into hay, and this is fed to the stock. Maize will take the 
place of clover hay, and the clover will be grazed off the land, and the animals will 
return it to the land better prepared to act as a manure than if the clover was cut, 
made into hay, carried to the barn, and then fed to the stock. The advantage of 
grazing clover off the land is very great, as it at once returns to it all that the clover 
takes from the sod. 

" I recommend every farmer who reads these suggestions to sow an acre of land 
with corn or maize — if you have no drill sow it broadcast, and when in tassel use any 
old mowing machine you may have to cut it down, and then if you have no feed- 
cutter, buy or borrow one and cut up the fodder as ordered — bury it in the ground, 
and when winter comes feed your stock upon it, and when you try it once you will 
never be without it again. I have used it for four seasons, every time with complete 
success, and I know that it multiplied the value of our land three or four times over." 

But in competition with the great, tenant-farms of Minnesota, California, etc., 
the grain producer of the Eastern States cannot thrive as such against such a com- 
bination of capital, machinery, and space. On the stock farm, however, this combi- 
nation has no especial advantage where ensilage annihilates winter for the dairyman. 

The manure heaps iu the cattle-yard should be made sloping, so that it can be 
driven upon, and by compacting it can be kept from heating. This is ensilage of the 
manure heap. 

Masonry Silos. — For several years past Mr. O. B. Potter of Sing Sing has been 
using underground brick silos. These are arched over and are provided with man- 
holes or necks through which the cut fodder is thrown into the pit below. It is then 
trampled and covered with earth or brewers' grains. As it is not compressed by con- 
tinuous pressure of 50 to 100 pounds per square foot the air is not entirely expelled and 
the ensilage is always sour. Mr. Potter says however that his cattle do well upon 
it. The silos are connected with each other by narrow openings making a succession 



62 

of chambers, and also with a passage to the stable so that all the food and the labor 
of supplying it to the animals is out of sight aud out of the way of the landscape 
above. The walls are 12 inches thick, brick laid in cement with smooth joints, and 
when the ground is gravelly or saudy the outside is covered with a coat of cemeut. 
The bottoms are laid with brick flat in cemeut. 

I do not dwell upou the method of Ailing and watching for cracks in the earth 
covering, because few will be likely to follow this method on account of the expense 
and the awkwardness of tilling under au arched roof, but Mr. Potter is as enthusiastic 
as the others. He seems to have been bitten by the same dog ; he says: 

MIXING FODDER IN* THE PITS. 

" Much advantage will be gained by mixing clover and grass in which clover 
predominates in the same pit through fodder corn, millet or sorghum. The clover 
becomes after the first fermentation a putty like mass, which fills the interstices in 
coarser and more fibrous fodder, and thus makes the whole much more compact and 
weighty than it would otherwise be, while it improves the quality of the food. 

" Among all our products iu the Northern States there is none which will be 
more enhanced iu value by this system than red clover. By it this is rendered the 
most profitable and most easily preserved without detriment of all our grasses. A 
well built up with an 8-inch brick wall in cement, 12 feet in diameter, 30 feet deep, 
with a roof, windlass and bucket, will preserve perfectly and deliver for use the 
whole clover product of more than twenty acres of fertile land. I have recently 
put the fairly heavy clover from sixteen acres into a space 24 feet long 13 feet wide 
and 10 feet deep. But the benefit of this system when applied throughout the 
country in preserving fodder corn, sorghum, and the large millets will be incalcu- 
lable. These crops, hitherto the most difficult, uncertain and expensive to cure 
and preserve, become the surest, easiest and least expensive in these respects, while 
they are among the richest and best milk and butter producing foods known. By 
this system the whole southern portion of our country where the tame grasses are 
not grown is at once furnished with a meaus everywhere applicable and easily 
practicable by which their cattle may be fed aud fattened in winter ana summer as 
well, and nearly or quite as cheaply as where tame grasses abound. Who shall say 
how important an agency corn, sorghum and clover wells and pits, which will be 
practically everlasting and will save two-thirds the labor and all the waste in curing 
and preserving these crops, too safely to require insurance, and in one-twentieth of 
the present space, may not yet have in making this land of liberty, union and pro- 
gress also a land flowing with milk and honey for this and future generations?" 

CONCRETE SiLOS.. — Where the land is of such a nature that deep silos cannot be 
dug in it and made dry with economy, the next best thing is a concrete silo. 

The first silo of this kind built in the United States is that of Dr. J. M. Bailey, 
at Billerica Mass, "who was so thoroughly inspired by reading Monsieur Goffart's 
story, even through the spectacles of my translation that he immediately undertook 
it. He has contributed very much to the public confidence in the. system by his 
energy in practicing it, and activity in writing about it. He says, " my silos, 40 feet 
long, each 12 feet wide aud 16 feet deep, capacity about 800,000 pounds, cost me $500 
or about one dollar and twenty-five cents per ton of capacity, larger oues would cost 
less." 

lie recommends an earth box 12 in. by 15 in. high for weights to compress with. 
He seems to think a shredding machine might do better than a cutter, but in that 



63 

he is certainly mistaken. The cutter advertised in this book combines all the im- 
portant features — strength, rapidity, clearing freely without clogging, positive feeding 
and with expansive rollers and simplicity of parts. It has been used four years for this 
purpose by the largest ensilagist in the world at present, and it is entirely unneces- 
sary for the Doctor t© be experimenting in that direction, at any rate until he has 
seen this one. 

His cost from field to silo was about 75 cents per ton. On a larger scale it can be 
done for half that amount. He claims for the system of ensilage, that " milk can be 
produced for one cent per quart, butter for ten cents per pound, beef for four cents per pound, 
mutton for nothing if wool is tltirty cents ptr pound." 

From the Country Gentleman I extract the following directions for building con- 
crete silos, written by Mr. E. W. Stewart, of Lake View, New York, who is a per- 
fect well-spring of practical information in agricultural affairs: 

"For a silo 12 feet by 20 feet (or longer) and 14 feet deep, which would hold 
72 tons, or sufficient for 10 cows (i months with full rations, the concrete walls should 
be 14 inches, thick at the bottom and 10 inches thick at the top of the side walls, 
with the bevel on the outside of the wall, and the end walls 12 inches thick top and 
bottom, the inside being perpendicular and smooth, so that the plank covering may 
settle with the ensilage. The concrete wall is stronger than an ordinary stone wall, 
and for this short silo, 14 iuches at bottom is thick enough. It is not best to go any 
deeper in the earth than can be well drained, and a trench should be cut on the 
outside of the wall, 6 to 10 inches deep, all around, to carry off all water that may 
reach this depth. If the land around the silo is nearly level, it is best to go only so 
deep that the bottom of the wall will be below frost. 

" Having excavated the earth as deep as the wall is to go, 15 feet wide and 23 
feet long, then set the standards for the boxes to form the concrete walls in. It will 
require 20 standards 3 by G inches, 15 feet long (if the walls are to be 14 feet high), 
of straight grained timber. Those standards intended for the inside of the Avail should 
be joiuted straight on one edge, so that the wall may be made very straight and 
plumb on the inside. There will be three standards upon each long side— one at 
each corner and one in the middle. The outer edges of these iuside standards will 
be 11 feet 9 inches apart, and as the boxing plank are 1)4 inches thick, this will 
bring the walls just 12 feet apart. The outside standards will be opposite the inside 
ones, and just 3 inches farther apart than the wall is thick, so that when the plank 
are placed inside it forms a box 14 inches wide at the bottom, and the bevel or slant 
on the outside of the wall is made by bringing the outside standard 4 inches nearer 
the inside standard at the top. The end standards will be parallel with each other, 
and 15 inches apart. These standards are held together by nailing a lath under the 
bottom end and a bracket across the top end, holding the side standards 17 inches 
apart at the bottom and 13 inches at top. Then, when the standards are set up, and 
the inside standard plumbed very carefully, and both stay-lathed to hold them firmly 
in position, and the standards placed all around the proposed silo, it is all ready for 
fitting in the boxing plank. These boxing plank should be straight-grained hemlock 
orpine, 14 inches wide, 1-J- inches thick, and may be the whole length of each side 
and end, or, if more convenient, the sides may be two planks long, and the outside 
end plank will require to be 14. 1 , feet long, but they may run by the ends of the side 
planks. The outside of the ends must he plumb, so that the outside plank of the long 
sides can i>e raised, but the end walls being shorter, 12 inches thick is enough for 
strength md has the same material per foot of surface. When these boxing planks 



64 

are placed, there will be a continuous box, 14 inches on the sides and 12 inches on the 
ends, around the silo. 

PREPARING THE CONCRETE. 

" Water lime concrete is the only concrete suitable for silos, as it requires a strong, 
air-eight, smooth wall, and one that can stand moisture to some extent. This kind 
of wall is easily made air-tight, and is built cheaper than an ordinary stone wall. It 
is only necessary to use water lime or cement enough to completely coat the parti- 
cles of sand, so as to cement them together, and this becomes a cement to till in 
spaces among large gravel or between stones. The cement is made by mixing one 
part of water lime with four of fine sand, while dry, so that the lime and sand can 
be evenly mixed. Then work it into mortar, and if you have coarse gravel and no 
stone you may put in five or six parts of gravel, and this will be sufficient to cement 
all together. The gravel is best mixed in the mortar bed, but it must be used at 
once, as such mortar sets in a few minutes after wetting. But if you have rough 
stones of any kind, cobble or flat stone, they can be worked into the wall to good 
advantage, and save cement. When stones are to be worked in, put one Or two inches 
of thin mortar in the wall box, then bed into this mortar a layer of stone, keeping 
the stone back a half inch from the boxing plank, so that the cement may be tamped 
all around the stone, leaving a smooth surface on both sides of the wall. This 
cement is a poorer conductor of heat, cold and moisture than stone. A properly 
built concrete wall never shows frost on the inside. In many parts of the country, 
thin, flat, irregular stones are found in abundance, and these are well adapted to 
concrete walls, it requiring only a thin layer of concrete mortar between them, and 
the wall becomes solid in a few days. But with these flat stones, it is better not to 
bring them quite to the boxing plank, but to let the concrete come over the edges 
so as to form a smooth surface. 

"When this concrete wall is laid with stone, sand and lime, as stated, so large a 
proportion of stone may be worked in that the water lime will be only one-tenth of 
the wall, and the same wheu the wall is made of sand and coarse gravel j so that, 
to find the amount of water lime required, count one barrel to 40 cubic feet of wall 
to be built. If water lime is very expensive, and you have flat stones, no matter how 
irregular, you may use quicklime after you get one foot higher than the earth will 
come against it. One of quicklime to five of sand will make an excellent mortar to 
lay these stones in, doing the work in all respects as above stated. The concrete 
should be well tamped into the boxes, filling all crevices between the stones, and 
solid against the planks. Water lime will set hard enough so that these boxing 
planks can be raised 12 inches every day. That is, if you fill the box all arouud the 
silo in one day, the next morning you may raise the boxing planks where you began 
the day before ; and as you fill, raise section after section of planks till you get around 
again. This you may repeat each day till the wall is completed, provided the mortar 
sets in the usual time. But if quicklime is used, this sets slower, and will take two 
or three days to become strong enough to raise the plank. It will be noted that the 
planks are 14 inches wide, but are raised only 12 inches, which leaves a lap of 2 inches 
on the wall below, keeping the sides of the wall smooth and even. --The propositi 
silo wall will have 952 cubic feet in it, and requires 22 barrels of water lime, of the 
Akron or Eosendale brand. This lime in many places will cost from $1 to $1.25 per 
barrel or S22 to $27.50. The only other cost of the wall is the labor, which can be 
done by common laborers. The standards can be set by any one who can use a level 
aud plumb. When the walls are completed, take a seasoned board as wide as the wall 



65 

is thick, tar one side and turn the tarred side down upon the wall. This will pre- 
vent the moisture from rotting the plate rim placed on top of the wall. 

" The roof placed over this silo must be elevated some 3 feet above the plates so 
as to give head-room for filling the silo full. This may be done by framing short posts 
into the timber on top of the wall, and placing light plates on these, upon which the 
roof is to stand. It will be seen that this silo can be built, by many farmers, with 
only a small expenditure for water lime, shingles and nails, all the rest of the materials 
being from their own farms. The bottom of the silo is usually cemented, to prevent 
moisture from rising from below. I believe the silo is to be generally used in the 
future for storing green food for winter feeding." 

Mr. Stewart has also written some valuable articles on Dairy Buildings, from 
which I extract : 

THE OCTAGON BARN. 

' ' This form is most admirably adapted for enclosing the greatest space within the 
shortest line of outside wall, and is as easily and cheaply made as the rectangle. A 
little examination of this form of barn will not only show its adaptation to large 
farms but to all sizes — from the smallest to the largest. A farmer has but to calcu- 
late how much room he wants for cattle, how much for horses, how much tor sheep, 
how much for hay and grain, how much for carriages, wagons, tools, or any other 
purpose, and he can enclose just the number of square feet needed, and with the 
shortest outside wall. He may be liberal in his allowance of room, for it costs less, 
in proportion, as the size is increased. Suppose he requires for a fifty-acre farm, 
2,090 square feet of room ; this would require a fifty-foot octagon or a 40x52 rec- 
tangle. Now he would require timber forty feet long for the latter, while he could 
build the octagon with timber for the sills and plates only twenty-two feet long, and 
this would be the longest timber, unless he wished his posts higher. Each side 
would be only 20% feet, and the wall for the basement 165 feet long, whilst the other 
would be 184 feet long, saving 19 feet of wall and siding by the octagon, requiring 
but eight corner posts, and no intermediates, as the girts would be less than twenty 
feet long. He would require no interior posts or beams, except those for scaffolds. 
All the ordinary purlin posts and beams would be saved, and the labor on them. It 
is easy, also, to see that a few feet added to each side would furnish room for another 
fifty acres, and so on to any size desired. This form of building, properly understood) 
would lead farmers to abandon the building of a separate barn for each specific pur- 
pose, and to providing for all their necessities under one roof. If several barns are 
placed so as to be convenient, the danger, in case of a fire, is about the same as in one 
barn, for all would burn in either case. The economy of roofage is exhibited 
strongly by a comparison of my four barns with the octagon that takes their place. 
One hundred thousand shingles were required to roof the former, while sixty thou- 
sand covered the octagon. 

" This barn, 80 feet diameter, enclosing 5,350 square feet, has a much greater ca- 
pacity than the four barns which covered about 7,000 feet. Its extended form being 
that of an octagonal cone, each side bears equally upon every other side, and it has 
great strength without any crossties or beams, while the roof boards act as a power- 
ful tie to hold it all together, each nail holding to the extent of its strength, thus sup- 
plementing the strength of the plate rim or bottom chord. The octagonal roof of 
one-third pitch is self-supporting, resting only on the outside plates, and may be 
safely stretched over a diameter of as much as 150 feet without posts or purlins. 



GO 



SELF-CLEANING STABLE. 



"Automatic platforms, by which the stable may be made to clean itself, can be 
made. He has had one in operation for more than two years. Not five minutes of time 
have been expended in his stables in two years in cleaning. Let the fore feet of the 
cattle stand on a wooden platform and their hind feet upon an iron grating, made of 
wrought iron bars three-eighths of an inch thick and one and one-half inches wide. 
The bars of the grates are placed one and five-eighths inches apart, and rest upon iron 
joists one-half inch by two, these resting on an angle iron sill at the back of the plat- 
form, and the other end resting on the wooden platform. Through this grating the 
droppings fall. Harris Lewis once said, " cows cannot be kept clean unless you set 
up all night with them." This plan sets up with them and keeps them perfectly 
clean. There must be a receptacle below the grate, which must be cleaned when 
filled ; but this cleaning is no more labor thau when the manure is thrown out into a 
pile. Gratings can be put in for abont six dollars per cow and will last a life-time. 

" The cattle stand upon these bars with ease. Their feet stand across the bars. 
The gratings cannot be used in barns in which the manure freezes. No wood work 
comes in contact with the manure, and therefore there is no wood to be rotted. If 
winter dairying is to be inaugurated, cows must be kept clean. The platform costs 
no more than the bedding of a cow for one season. 

" This platform saves all the liquid as well as solid manure in the gutters under 
the platform. This saving of the liquid manure is equal to the whole cost of tli-j 
grating in a single year. In Flanders the liquid manure of a cow is estimated at $10 
per year. 

COLD STORAGE. 

"The cheapest store room for dairy purposes is to go down into the earth for it. 
The right temperature can be reached anywhere by going down fifteen feet, walling 
the excavation and covering it. It is not to be recommended for setting milk, but 
for ordinary cold storage it is valuable. It would not be so easily cleansed as a room 
above ground, and therefore would not be so convenient for setting milk, but a tem- 
perature of sixty degrees or under, may be reached at fifteen feet, which temperature 
will be even, and therefore better for storing butter, or even meat for short periods, 
than in an ice house. For such purposes this excavated room would be cheaper than 
in any other form. It would furnish an excellent temperature for ripening cream. 
It might be made very useful in the Southern States, where a high temperature is so 
destructive to dairy products." 



HOW TO RAISE FODDER CORN. 

From a Long Island Farmer. 

" This very important and valuable crop needs only to be well managed and a 
fine yield is insured. I have had fine results without fail under the following treat- 
ment: Having the ground thoroughly pulverized before planting and a proper culti- 
vation after the corn is up, will change results in this, perhaps as much as any crop 
the farmer grows. Sward ground may be considered as good a chance for this crop as 



67 

it can have. I plow the ground in the fall (being a firm believer in fall plowing for 
other crops as well), and always plow about nine inches deep ; this I do with an Ada- 
mant plow, the only plow I ever saw that would turn a furrow that depth satisfac- 
torily. Deep plowing will tell its own story in any fair soil. (See cut beyond.) 

"In the spring or early summer, my first object is to thoroughly pulverize the 
soil as deep as possible without tearing up the sward ; this is effectually and quickly 
done with a disk harrow, one of the best implements that I ever saw. It leaves the soil 
more mellow, loose and light, than it is possible to get it with any other harrow. 
No good farmer would be without one of these tools after seeing it work one half 
hour. 

"If it is desired to use stable manure (and for mellow ground I think this 
preferable in connection with a 60 bushel to the acre coat of shell lime), which may 
be spread broadcast and thoroughly worked and mixed with the soil by this same 
wheel harrow. But sward ground may be considered a fine chance without fertilizer; 
all that is required is something to give the corn a start, and guano seems to fill the 
bill for this purpose better thau anything I ever tried, and is as quickly applied. I 
then sow the corn in rows or drills about thirty inches apart with a grain drill. Two 
bushels and four quarts I consider the proper quantity to the acre. Those not having 
a regular grain drill can use a rotary seed drill, sowing perfectly one row at a time 
with one horse ; this drill only costs about twenty dollars and can be adjusted for 
sowing any seed, however small or large, without skipping. (See cut beyond). 

" After the corn has attained the height of about an inch the smoothing harrow 
is applied, and I continue harrowing every few days in this way the whole ground 
over until the corn has attained a height of three or four inches. The result is that a 
whole crop of weeds just sprouting are destroyed at each harrowing, saving an end- 
less amount of labor afterward, and also leaving the ground loose and mellow at the 
surface. From the peculiar construction of this harrow it does not pull up or injure 
the corn in the least ; the teeth are round and small and set at an angle of about 30 
degrees, sloping backward ; and the draft being applied at an angle gives the teeth a 
sort of zigzag movement, completely stirring up every inch of ground. The growing 
corn being sufficiently strong dodges the teeth and is not injured. This harrow is 
admirably adapted to harrowing potato fields, before and after the tubers are above 
ground ; also for smoothing the ground for seed of all kinds. It leaves the ground in 
much the same condition that it is after being raked with a steel tooth rake. As the 
corn becomes too large to permit of harrowing in this way, I cultivate between the 
rows." 

For heavy soil a plow running deep, such as the Cabbage Adamant (see cut be- 
yond), will largely increase the size of the stalks. For light soils the Hilling Culti- 
vator (see cut beyond), will accomplish excellent work in killing weeds. 

Some farmers say that it is a mistake to sow or drill it too thick, and that three 
pecks of Southern Horse Tooth Corn is sufficient and makes more nutritive stalks. 
Of course, the better the soil the less seed will be required. 

THE cow PEA 
is much more valuable food for ensilaging than fodder corn, each tou of it having 
much more nutriment. It is much nearer a complete food in itself, having a proper 
proportion of albuminoids to carbohydrates. Fodder corn has a great value on 
account of the facility of raising it all over the country, and also from the fact that 
more tons of corn can be raised upon an acre than of any other crop. There is little 
doubt that when the system of ensilage shall become common, the green food pre- 



68 

served will be composed of a variety of crops — such as cow pens, or other peas, and 
fodder corn, clover and fodder corn, green rye, millet or Hungarian grass, peas and 
oats, grown together, and in fact, all. grasses. The Southern States will be particu- 
larly adapted to this system. 

Dr. Wolff gives the value of average hay at 64 cents per 100 pounds. Ensilaged 
corn fodder, containing 80 per cent, of water, according to the most careful experi- 
ments I have been able to make, is worth one-half as much as good hay. This 
makes the corn-fodder thus prepared worth, on the same basis, 32 cents per 100 pounds. 
Dr. Wolff also gives the value of corn as $1.10 per 100 pounds. Prof. Johnson gives 
the value of corn meal as $1.04 per 100 pounds; therefore a barrel of corn would be 
worth, according to the German chemist, $3.08. By dividing $3.08 by 32 cents, the 
value of the corn fodder, we have almost 963 pounds as the amount of green corn 
fodder (properly preserved), which is the equivalent of a barrel of corn. By com- 
puting it according to the valuation of corn meal by Prof. Johnson, we find that 910 
pounds of ensilaged corn-fodder is equal to a barrel of corn ground into meal. 

Ensilage is not likely to become a portable commodity by baling; though decay 
takes place very slowly when packed solidly, still a bale would soon be surrounded 
by a few inches of decayed and maggoty matter. 



LETTER FROM M. AUGUSTE GOFFART. 
To Monsieur J. B. Brown at New York. 

December 19, 1879. 

" By your letter of Nov. 19th I am informed that you are to deliver a lecture to the 
American Dairyman's Association, on the "Ensilage of Maize," and you ask what 
modifications of my processes I may have adopted that may profit your fellow- 
citizens. 

" The longer experience I have in feeding ensilage to stock the more I am con- 
vinced of the great service that it will render to agriculture. 

" From October, 1878 to October, 1879, I have fed the hundred animals in my 
stable exclusively with ensilage maize during the winter, and concurrently with 
fresh maize at the time when I had it. The animals have always enjoyed the most 
excellent health, and I can assure you that they have more appetite for the ensilage 
maize than for fresh fodder, whatever kind it may be. Cows fed upon fresh maize 
give excellent milk, which yields first quality butter and of exquisite flavor. Fed 
upon ensilaged maize, the milk is still very good, and I have not noticed that its 
quantity diminished, but the butter, while still being of good quality, is however 
inferior. But whatever may be the diet of the cows in winter, the butter made at 
that season is always inferior to that made during the fine weather. I have caused 
to be taken from the account books of the expenses upon my Domaine the cost of the 
culture and ensilage of maize during the past season. I hope to be useful to you in 
sending it herewith. You will observe how small a cost for the food of the animals. 
Indeed, in reckoning 6 per cent., the weight of the animal for its daily food, I arrive 
at an expense of 3f of a cent per day to feed an animal of 1,320 pounds. T know 
of no fodder of which the ration costs so little as my maize, which only costs me 90 
cents per ton; and this notwithstanding the year has been unfavorable for maize, 
the wet spring and part of summer having injured the plant. I have built near my 



69 

silos an embankment, forming a platform, accessible from two sides by a gentle slope 
for the easy ascent of carts loaded with maize. Upon this platform I have estab- 
lished an engine, and my stalk-cutter, which are level with the upper part of my 
silos. The elevator carries the fodder over the center of the middle of one of the 
three silos, and it falls into all the silos in diverging streams. I have obtained thus 
a noteworthy economy, by avoiding moving the machines, and by saving valuable 
time at a season of the year when the working days are so short. 

" I thank you for the kind words you have sent me. I consider them as a recom- 
pense for the efforts that I have made for so long a time to make myself useful to 
agriculturists. I trust that your fellow-countrymen will be glad to enter in the path 
which you have indicated to them. Say to them that those of them who desire to 
come to study the subject of ensilage upon the ground, may rest assured of receiving 
a kind reception at Burtin." 

DOMAINE OF BURTIN. 

Account of crop of maize, 1879, 75 acres : 

( 150 days, horses at 93 cents $139 50 

30 dayss 453 days, men at 56 cents 253 68 

( 408 days, women at 37 cents 150 96 

$544 14 
Commenced September 29. Finished November 8. Total crop, 2,376 tons. Of 
which fed green, 53 tons. 

Account of cultivation and ensilage of 2^ acres of maize =one hectare : 

Deep fall plowing §4 09 

Harrowing 57 

Spring plowing 4 09 

Harrowing 57 

Manure, 64 feet at 16 cents, $10.20; cartage, loading, spreading, $2.40. 

Total, $12.64. Charge one-half to this crop 6 32 

Guano, 440 pounds, at 2, a cents .. 12 76 

Seed, 220 pounds, at 2f cents 5 80 

Sowing broadcast 18 

Plowing in seed 2 23 

Harrowing 57 

Cutting with sickle 5 02 

Loading on wagon 2 79 

Carting 4 65 

Cutting 2 79 

Filling 93 

Covering (silo containing 600 tons) 25 

Wine to employees, 20 quarts at 10 cents 2 00 

Use of engine and cutter 1 86 

Wood for fuel 1 86 

Oil for machinery 19 

Fireman 85 

Rent of ground 5 58 

Interest one year, at 5 per cent, on above expenses 3 30 

$69 25 
Total cost, ready to be fed, 87^ cents per ton, or $28.03 per acre. 






70 

SCIENCE AT THE CONNECTICUT AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 

New Haven. Conii., July 1, 1880. 

"Tiik smaller amount of dry substance, both in acreage and in equal weight, in 
case of the thickly sown corn, is very striking. Thick planting, early cutting or im- 
maturity and heavy manuring, all act alike in increasing the water content of foddei 
corn. 

" That the silo cannot oreate any fodder, or that we cannot take out of the silo 
any food element that we do not put in, is evident. 

" It is, I scarcely doubt, equally trno that ensilage is no more palatable, no more 
digestible, and no more nutritions than the fresh corn from which it is produced. The 
minor now Boating in the air that ensilage is worth more, nay, much more than the 
fresh corn fodder, has nothing solid to rest on. Fodder is on all hands conceded to 
lose nothing in the silo that can effect a concentration of its nutritive matters. The 
analyses of Barral, which Goffart quotes in his book, give both for fresh maize and for 
ensilage 80 per cent, of water. The main advantage of the silo plainly is to magazine 
green fodder. Whether in our climate the silo or the stook and shed are beet, expe- 
rience must decide. Whether successful ensilage is more palatable or more cheap 
than well cured corn fodder, experience must likewise settle. That ensilage, once 
provided, may be a valuable accessory to dry feed, is fairly to be anticipated, but 
evidently the enthusiasts are overrating it." S. W. Johnson. 

The New York Legislature has recently appropriated $"20,000 a year for the sup- 
port of an Experiment Station. If Dr. Heath manages it, it will be practical and 
useful to the community. 

Estimated Account of 50-Acre Farm, By J. M. Bailey, of Winning Farm. 
15 Cows, without Ensilage. 

Expenditure. 

[ntereston farm, value $5,000 $300 00 

Repairs on building, 2)4 per cent, on $2,000 50 00 

Taxes on farm, $40; on stock. $10 - r .() 00 

Wages and board of hired man, 9 months at $30 270 00 

Depreciation of stock and farming tools, $1,500 at 10 per cent ir>0 00 

$910 00 
Income. 
2,1 00 quarts milk per cow at 3 cents 900 00 

Deficiency $10 00 

Showing that the fanner and his wife work for their board and lose $10 per year. 

Same Farm with Fnsilagk. 28 Cows, 100 Sheep, 7 Hogs. 

1 hi crest on farm, stock, silos, manure and sheep-shed $501 70 

Wages one hired man, <i months at $25 ^- l> r> 00 

Repairs -- »< 

Taxes and insurance 80 00 

Meal and bran, 4 pounds per cow, per day 280 00 

Grain for sheep and horses - Io0 00 

$1,271 70 



71 

Income. 

.5,600 pounds butter at 10 cents $560 00 

14,000 pounds pork at 3 cents 420 00 

28 yearlings at $10 280 00 

700 pounds wool at 30 cents 210 00 

90 lambs (Cotswold ) at $4 360 00 

$1,830 00 

Profit $558 30 



COMPAKAT1VE COST. 

The expense of keeping 35 horned animals and 100 sheep at Winning Farm, is 

as follows: 

1,350 pounds of ensilage at $1.01 $1 35 

90 pounds of shorts 80 

50 pounds of hay at $15.00 per ton 37^ 

Total cost per day $2 52 K 

The cost of keeping the above stock upon hay and grain would be as follows: 
20 pounds of hay to each animal (ten yearlings counted as five cows), making 30 
head, would require daily as follows : 

600 pounds of hay for cattle at $15 per ton $ 4 50 

200 pounds of hay for 100 sheep 1 50 

121 1 pounds of shorts for cattle at $18 per ton 1 OH 

46 pounds of shorts for sheep 36 

Total cost of keeping 30 cattle and 100 sheep per day on hay and grain S7 44 

Cost of keeping the ahove on ensilage as above 2 52 J4 

Daily balance in favor of ensilage $4 91^ 

Dr. Bailey says : " From my experience in feeding so far, I consider Ensilage to 
be worth one-half as much as the best timothy hay. I would not, however, ex- 
change Ensilage for hay and give two tons for one." 



FARMING FOR PROFIT. 

The most profitable farming is that which gives the largest returns for the 
smallest comparative outlay. This statement is based on business principles, but it is 
not always apparently true, for sometimes a farmer gets large crops with small out- 
lay by the use of means which draw heavily upon the reserve forces of the soil. The 
latter should be reckoned into the expense account, but usually is not, though if 
such a course is continued, it results in exhaustion. To revise the first statement 
then : that kind of farming is most profitable which gives the largest returns for the 
expense iucurred, without decreasing one's capital by exhausting the soil 



English agriculture dates it rise from the beginning of the fattening of animals 
for market. The most fertile farms in the Eastern States to-day, are, as a rule, those 
that are devoted to stock and dairy- farming. The production and sale of large crops 
of grain, potatoes, and other field crops, without any return of fertility, has caused 
the present sterility of the many thousand acres of comparatively exhausted farm 
lands, West, South, and East. If their owners had kept live stock for the consump- 
tion of the crops, and sold only the animal products ami the surplus grain, etc., they 
might have been even more productive to-day than in the beginning. The growth 
of plants does not exhaust the soil, but on the contrary makes it richer, so long as the 
mineral and nitrogenous elements of plant-food are returned to the land. The action 
of the roots is to extract food material from the rocks (as we may regard the inor- 
ganic matter of the soil), and of the leaves to draw it from the air, and to store it in 
the soil ; but if more thau the material thus obtained is removed and not returned, 
exhaustion necessarily follows. 

By feeding crops to animals, the larger portion of the essential mineral and 
nitrogenous portions are returned to the soil in the resulting manure ; particularly is 
this the case in fattening mature animals, and in the production of butter and pork. 
Au animal extracts from its food nitrogen for its muscles, phosphate for its bones, 
some potash, and the vegetable oils and other carbonaceous matter for its fatty 
tissues aud for respiration. The nitrogen, phosphates and potash, we must supply to 
the soil, as plants seldom obtain these materials from natural sources so rapidly as 
we remove them in crops sold ; the material for oils, sugar, starch, and other carbon- 
aceous matters are furnished to the plants from air and soil in ample quantities to 
meet all demands. Now, a growing animal stores up the first three of these food ma- 
terials. A mature animal, on the contrary, only uses enough of them to make good 
the wastes of the body, but these wastes are all found m the excrements ; so that 
practically a fattening animal removes none of those constituents of its food that are 
valuable for manure. We can, therefore, feed the home-grown crops and purchased 
food to mature animals, and get nearly or quite its full value twice over in beef, aud 
in manure for the production of more crops. 

Similar principles apply in feeding swine. Pork is for the most part composed of 
the fatty matter which costs nothing in the crop. Hence the value of hog manure, 
with which every farmer is familiar. In butter-making also, very little if any fertil- 
ity is removed from the farm iu the butter sold, as it is composed wholly of fatty 
compounds. This fact is illustrated in practice by the exceptional fertility of butter 
dairy farms, which, instead of becoming sterile are continually growing more fertile. 
These facts indicate that the profitable farming of the future in many sections is to 
be, as it is to-day, in increased attention to fattening animals and in dairying. — From 
American Agriculturist, Jan., 1879. 

CONCLUSIONS. 

After much investigation into this subject, I have come to the conclusion that 
this system must prevail, and that the method of making hay aud drying stalks is 
soou to be abandoned, and that when the ensilage is properly preserved from ripe 
stalks (not ripe with grain) just as good and just as much milk and butter can be 
made in the winter as in the summer, even in the climate of the Northern States. 

Mr. Mills' method is certainly the best yet described. He says, "The silo should 
be of such size as that the facilities for cutting may bo able to fill it in three days. 
The curbing should be about one-third of the depth of the silo, and when filled the 
battened two inch oak plank sections should be evenly and solidly laid, so that as the 
mass settles, the cover will come right between the masonry walls. These sections 
of three and one-half feet are equivalent to eeparate pits, since tbe air cannot enter 



73 

the side on account of the compression, and the space under each section can be en- 
tirely emptied, and the quantity it contains used up before disturbing another section. 
If this cover were not battened it would not be so firm and even. It is not to be 
forgotten that the cover is to be put on as soon as the filling is completed. No mu- 
riate of soda (salt) should be used with this alcoholized food. Nothing as yet known 
is as profitable as maize, but under the high manuring that is to come from this sys- 
tem, there is no telling to what extent other forage plants may be profitably o T own. 
A door to a silo is to be avoided if possible ; the method of emptying from the top 
being so much better. 

And now a word about plowing ; much of the land in the Eastern States is prac- 
tically exhausted. It has been borrowed from without return many years, scourged 
with crops, and forced with lime, and plowed at same depth, not exceeding six inches. 
In many places the soil below this depth is better than that above it, and it has be- 
come cemented or puddled by plowing at a uniform depth, without subsoiling, so that 
roots cannot penetrate below in search of moisture and fertility. Almost all the sub- 
soil plows advertised have been too easily broken, or lift too much soil. Cut here- 
with, illustrates one that cannot be broken and which breaks without lifting. 

To return to the great subject, the best testimony that I have heard was from a 
farmer, whose silo was emptied April 1st. He said it cost him more to feed his eighty 
cows from that time to pasture in May, than the whole five previous months had 
cost. He has enlarged his silo, and the accident will not probably occur again with 
him. 

It is of the greatest importance that the Machinery should be strono-. A Farm 
Engine is steadier and safer than a tread Horse Power, but if the latter Is used it is 
very important to have a Governor on it. 

The Cutter cannot be too strong, and must run smooth and true. Many farmer* 
will have their first effort in this system sour in the silo through delay caused bv the 
breakage of their Cutter, when, through inexperience, they have bought too light a 
machine for the purpose. It requires watchfulness and frequent oilino-. It is a good 
plan to have a reserve Cutter, but at any rate duplicate parts should be on hand 
before commencing operations. Care is the only preventive of breakage. A Slip- 
ping Balance Wheel, sometimes recon. mended, cannot reduce in any way the force of 
the blow, and is actually a disadvantage. 

But Farmers should not be deterred from adopting this system by the apparent 
cost. Any cellar or old ice-house or any place in which pressure can be applied and 
air tight and water tight sides be made will do for the first investment. 

A one horse Lever or Tread power with such cutters as have been used lor 
cutting dry fodder until the profits of the system will provide a larger one, is better 
than to do nothing. Such a power is competent to 10 to 15 tons of green stalks per 
day and can be used with a light animal with very little risk. 

An Alderney bull trained from yo' 1 ' h will make a useful animal for a tread 
power. 

On land where there are many loose stones great care should be taken that none 
get mixed with the stalks, as the Cutter is always liable to breakage from stones. A 
movfable low platform on wide wheels to lay the stalks upon as cut is safer than to 
throw them upon the ground, and is easier to load from. In unloading a wao-on much 
labor and time can be saved by placing two ropes lengthwise on the bottom of the 
wagon, the front ends joined in a ring, the rear ends provided with a ring in each two 
hook$ over two hooks screwed m the floor of the barn or platform. The 'wao-on beino- 
hacked to the door, the front ring is raised and attached to a pulley rope°and by a 
double pulley or windlass the whole load cau be at once rolled over and upon the plat- 
form by the side of the Cutter. If not already built the silo should be begun as soon 
as the crop is planted and the Cutter should be obtained and te s ted in position weeks/f^o-te^ 
l«efore it is time to use it. If these things are postponed the harvest will be delayed^ 
till the stalks become pithy and the leaves faded. 



THE NEW YORK PLOW CO., 55 BEEKMAN ST. 




ENSILAGE CUTTER. 

(Trade Mark of The N. Y. Plow Company.) 
Combines great rapidity with strength, durability and simplicity of parts. It 
has 4 spiral knives of heavy cast steel. The length of cut is easily changed. Ihe 
two feed rollers open both parallel and obliquely, and cannot be clogged. The knife 
cylinder revolves without jar, and cuts with exactness. The mouthpiece is of hard 
steel, with its cutting edge planed; the knives cut upward which is essential to 
safety. Nos. 2 and 3 have tight and loose belt pulleys and babbitted boxes. 

We Lave made a special study of cutters for eusilage, and claim to know about them. 

No. 1.— Has 4 knives, weight 600 lbs. Length of knives, 12 in., cuts, -r%, 

■A-, in. Weight of balance wheel, 125 lbs. Diam. pulley, 18 in. Will 

cu* lj tons dry or 3 tons green stalks per hour. Suitable for 1 horse 

power. Price * 75 00 

No. 8.— Length of knives, 15 in. Length of cut, -&, -ft, -fir, -fV in. Diam. P"Heys, 
22 in. Weight of balance wheel, 150 lbs. Will cut 2 tons dry or o tou s 

green stalks per hour. Price $1*0 ou 

No. 3.— Length of knives, 18 in. Length of cut, -ft, -fr, ifir, h 2 o «*• Weight of 
balance wheel, 400 lbs. Diam. pulleys, 26 in. Will cjit 4 tonsdry or 10 tons 
green stalks per hour. This cutter is now in use by the largest ensilagist 

in the United States. Price $250 00 

Extra for Elevator •■••••-* 10 ;" 

Smaller Cutters for power --- f 25, |40 & !»bU 

« n « b an d $7, $9, $15, $20 & |3o 

MANUFACTURED BY 

THE NEW YORK PLOW COMPANY, 

55 Beekman Street, N. T. 



THE NEW YORK PLOW CO., 55 BEEKMAN ST., 



75 



THE NEW YORK PLOW CO.'S 



ADAMANT A, 



Two-Horse. 




;-^^pr,^- 



HARD METAL, 

ADJUSTABLE BEAMS. BALANCED CENTRAL DRAFT, 

EXCELLING IN 

Scouring Qualities, Lightness of Draft, and Perfect-Fitting Repairs. 

THE AVORD ADAMANT CLAIMED AS A TRADE MARK. 



The Metal of which they are made is of uniform hardness— so hard that it cannot be 
drilled or FILED— so fine in grain that it will polish like a mirror. The polished surface of 
the mold-board will not roughen any more than glass. Rust does not eat into it ; and when coated 
with rust it will repolish in the ground in two minutes as bright as silver. One mold-board of 
this metal will wear at least as long as three of steel. The hardness of this metal causes these 
plows to draw much easier than ordinary cast-iron or steel plows. The metal is uniform, and 
not liable to soft spots, as chilled plows always are; a piece suspended rings like a bell. 

We have abundant testimony that this metal will clear itself in soil where some steel plotos will 
not VBork at all. 

The Beam is placed in the middle of the work, giving 
the plow a central draft, and avoiding all underneath 
and side friction. This is also desirable for one-horse 
plows, as it permits the horse to walk in the furrow. 
The beam being movable at the points, of attachment, 
the central draft can always be kept perfect. The ad- 
justing is done at the heel of the beam, whicli can be moved 
from or to the land, as desired, which brings the work under 
exact control of the plowman. Even if the beam toarps or 
springs, he can correct it. This adjustment is a great ad- 
vantage in plowing among trees and through rows of corn. 

REVERSIBLE SEEF-SHARPENING SLIP SHAKE.— We 

have fitted these Shares to all sizes of our Adamant Plows, re- 
ducing the cost of repairs. With a sharp point all the time, 
these Plows always run level and true. These Slips are held 
firmly in place by a nail. Restoring the length of point causes edge of wing of the share to 
wear sharp, and one share will wear four or more slips which are always sharp being reversed. 

We also send a solid Share, as being Stronger in Stony or Rooty Ground. 







70 



THE NEW YORK PLOW CO., 55 BEEKMAN ST. 



ADAMANT A is a Full Two-Horse Plow, suitable for both Sod and Stubble ground, and 
for both Smooth and Stony Land. It is sufficiently strong for an ox-team or 
tor t liree horses. It makes a furrow 14 to 15 inches wide by 6 to 8 deep. Height 
under beam, 17K inches. 

" S is same size as A, but of a shape made especially for very sticky soils. It 

is suitable for prairie or other sticky lands. It is our latest and best Wood 
Beam Plow. , * 

T is a Two-Horse Plow of exceedingly light draft, furrow 6 to 7 inches deep, 12 

to 13 inches wide, and is our best Plow for light soil. 
B is a very Light Two-Horse Plow suitable for land entirely free from stones. 
6 by V2 ! A inch furrow. 

'• C is a Strong One-Horse or Small Two-Horse Plow. Furrow 5 to 6 inch by 11 

to 12 inch furrow, similar in shape to A. 
E is an Excellent One-Horse Plow. As this size is generally used in moist 
soil, it will be found a great comfort by the manner in which it clears itself. 

" K and M are left-hand Plows, same size as A and B. 

G is an Iron Beam Two-Horse Plow, and is especially adapted for burying all 
trash with use of Skim Plow in place of Coulter ; but any of these Plows will 
do as good work with Coulter as other modem Plows will with Skim or Joint- 
er, because the shape of the mold is so perfect. Furrow 14 to 15J6 by 5 to 7 
inches deep. L is similar to G, but the latter is better for Jointer. For very 
stony ground we recommend solid shares instead of slip shares, as less liable to 
accident. 

" CABBAGE or CORN is a Plow needed by every Ensilagist to make his stalks 

erow his;h. 



ADAMANT L 

Two-Horse Iron Beam. 




Adamant Cabbage Flow, 
or Corn Sub-Soiler. 

WITH TWO SIZE MOULDS. 




THE NEW YORK PLOW CO., 55 BEEKMAN ST. 



i > 



PRICE OF ADAMANT PLOWS AND 
FIXTURES. 


Plain 
Plow. 


Plow with 
Wheel. 


Plow with ^eYf 
or Skim. | or Skim 


ADAMANT H, Light One- Horse 


$5 00 

6 00 

7 50 

10 00 

11 00 

12 00 
10 00 
12 00 

12 00 

12 00 
6 00 


$ii'6o 

12 00 

13 00 
11 00 
13 00 

13 00 

13 00 


$1150 

13 00 

14 00 
11 50 
14 00 

14 00 

14 00 




" E, Medium " 




" C, Full " 




" B, Light Two-Horse 


$12 00 


" T, Medium " 


14 00 


" A, Full " 


15 00 


M, Light " Lett-Hand .... 
K, Full 
" G or L, Two-Horse, Iron Beam, Eight- 
Hand 


12 00 
15 00 

15 00 


" S, Two-Horse, Wood Beam, Right- 


15 00 












ENSILAGE CORN PLANTER. 

The latest improved One-Horse Machine for the purpose. It opens the drill, drops 

the seed accurately and covers it. Price S20.00 




TWO-HORSE ROTARY CHECK ROWING CORN PLANTER, 

Combines Drill and Hill Planter in same machine, two rows at a time $50 00 



78 



THE NEW YORK PLOW CO., 55 BEEKMAN ST. 



MANURE SPREADER, 

Pulverizer and Cart combined $110 00 

I>ISK HARROW 25 00 

Latest and Best Kind. Send for Special Circular. 
SMOOTHING HARROW 20 00 

Send for Special Catalogue. 

We also manufacture PLOWS of all kinds for different soils, aud for every kind of use. 
Repairs for same, including Iron and Wood Beam— 18, 18£, 19, 19J, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 35, 35J, 36, 
37, 2£ D, 3| D, 6 Road, Side Hill, Minor & Horton, aud Boston, Double Mould, Eagle, Double 
Point, Rougb and Ready, Contractors', and Grading, for both domestic and export trade. 

Also— Plows for Southern States. Louisville, Richmond, Fredericksburgh and other 
Southern Steel and Iron Plows. Repairs for all cast plows, wherever made. 

Also— Road Scrapers, Harrows, Store Trucks, Stable Furniture, Clod Crusher, Cider 

Mills and Presses, Press Screws, Field and Garden Rollers, Road Rollers, Corn Shelters, Corn 

Mills, Dog Powers, Caldrons, Farmers' Boilers, Water Drawers, Settees, Lawn Mowers, Hose 

Reels. 

CORRESPONDENCE WITH FARMERS DESIRED. 



New York Potato Digger with Steel Wings. 




Price, Wood Beam, $12.00. 



Won Beam, $8.00. 



ifjlie^im: imiN-a-iiisriEs, 

These will be largely required in connection with Ensilage Cutters. The best one 
that we now know of in regard to economy in fuel and water, and safety from sparks 
(without screen), and freedom from encrustation and danger of burning tubes aud crown 
sheets, is one with horizontal tubes, and which we can furnish as follows : 

Six-Horse, Mounted $800 00 

Ten-Horse, " 950 00 

including Balanced Valve, Governor, Safety Valve, Feed Water Heater, Direct Acting Pump, 
Whistle, Water Gauge, Wagon Brake, Blower and Exhaust Nozzle. Weight of Ten-Horse, 
3,800 lbs. Easily taken apart. 

Should any satisfactory machine be offered at less price, we shall be prepared to advise 
farmers on the subject. 

HORSE POWERS. 

Two-Horse Endless Chain $150 00 i Four-Horse Lever $125 00 

One-Horse " " 115 00 I One-Horse Lever 50 00 

DogPower $20 oo 

POTATO DIGGING MACHINE. 

Will dig ten acres per day $75 00 



THE NEW YORK PLOW CO., 55 BEEKMAN ST. 



79 




THE FIELD ROLLER. 



Is a valuable Machine for crushing sods and lumps remaining after the harrow has passed, 
pressing down stones and rendering the held smooth for the mowing machine, etc. By pressing 
the earth close about the seed, a more sure and quick germination is effected. This Iron Roller 
is the most approved kind, as it clears better and is more durable than the Wooden Roller. The 
stone-box is convenient for taking off loose stones. By rolling early in the spring the heaving 
effect of frost is repressed. Made extra heavy for Road Rolling, when so ordered, at propor- 
tionate prices. 

3 Sections, 12 inches face, by 20 inches diameter, weight about 550 lbs. 



4 •' 


12 


5 


12 


4 


12 


5 


12 


6 


12 


4 


12 


5 


12 


6 


12 


4 


12 


5 


12 


6 


12 



•JO 
20 
24 
•J 4 
■1 \ 
28 
2K 
28 
36 
3(5 
36 



650 

750 

850 

1000 

1200 

950 

1150 

1350 

1400 

1700 

2000 



With Whifnetrees, $4 00 extra. 



80 



THE NEW YORK PLOW CO., 55 BEEKMAN ST. 



HILLING CULTIVATOR. 

TOLLET'S PATENT SCREW BLADE. 

For Cultivating Corn, Potatoes, Tobacco, Sugarcane and all Rowed Crops. 




With this Cultivator the earth can be thrown to or from the plants, as desired, by 
merely changing the side bars without removing the teeth ; this can be doue in the field. The 
steel plates are reversible; they are twisted into a regular spiral curve, and will pulverize the 
soil and cut the weeds and grass more effectually and with less draft than any other form of 
cultivator plate, and at same time hill up the rows as much as may be desired, thus dispensing 
entirely with the use of the plow and hoe. 

By the use of this cultivator a farmer can save one-half his time in cultivating a corn crop 
with better results than can be accomplished with a plow, and it will save him at least ten 
miles walking in a day. It expands to 28 inches. 



Wrouaht Beam Double Mold Plow with Shoe. 




For Cultivating, and Ridging or Hilling Corn, Potatoes, etc. Holds easy, runs shady and 
is not liable to clog. Works different widths of rows by using long and short wings. The 
Centre Piece increases or diminishes the height of the Mold-board as desired. 



THE NEW YORK PLOW CO., 55 BEEKMAN ST. 



81 



THE GOODALL SUB-SOIL PLOW. 

THE ONLY SUB-SOIL PLOW THAT CANNOT BE BROKEN. 
Grub-Hook, Stone and Root Puller. 

The beam is 3i by f in- 
ches, Wrought Iron, with 
Wrought Handles and 
Wrought Steel-laid Share. 
It is the strongest and best 
Subsoil Plow ever invented, 
and can be used with one 
mule or two yoke of oxen. 
It is just the thing for 
breaking up hard roads, 
loosening cobble-stone 
pavements, or for any other 
purpose where great 
strength is required ; yet it 
is very light and easily 
managed. The angle of the 
point is easily adjusted, so 
that the Plow will run to 
any required depth, and it 
will be found useful in 
loosening the dirt in the 
By removing the share it becomes a 

$10.00. 




bottom of ditches or drains, by attaching a short chain. 
Grub Honk. All farmers ou old farms need this Plow. 



Price, 



THE BDRRALL CORN-SHELLER OF 1880. 

WROUGHT SHAFTS, RIGHT HAND. 




THIS SHELLER separates the COBS 
from the SHELLED CORN. It has Wooden 
(instead of Iron) Legs, which are not liable 
to break, and are more easily repaired wheu 
broken. 

The open front Hopper makes it Right- 
Handed. Wrought Shafts. Excellent 
Spring. Runs smooth and easy. Longer 
Legs, which make Sheller several inches 
higher than formerly. Flat Balance Wheel ; 
can use belt if desired. 

The swell at the Throat, in combination 
with the patented Spring-plate, admits 
larger ears without clogging and without 
scraping or breaking the cob. It shells 
clean. The gearing has been changed, 
making it stronger, and causing it to turn 
very much easier thau any other Sheller in 
the market, and much easier thau those 
that we made last year. The spreading of 
the feet causes it to stand entirely firm, and 
the increased weight adds much to its dura- 
bility. 

These improvements make it entirely 
satisfactory for every section of this coun- 
try and all couutries. 



82 



THE NEW YORK PLOW CO., 55 BEEKMAN ST. 




THE 

New England Root Cutter 

Is the most effective machine of the 
kind made. It is strong and durable, 
simple in its construction, and not 
liable to get out of order. The cyl- 
inder, or cutting apparatus, is com- 
posed of a number of hooked or flat 
curved teetb, which, in revolving, 
pass between stationary knives, and 
catch hold and tear to pieces the 
roots, etc., in small sections, for 
safety. Capacity about one bushel 
per minute. 

Price, $10. 



Copper Strip Feed Getters. 

These Machines cut easier and faster 
than any other of like price, using hand 
power. The large sizes will cut faster by 
hand than any other cutter, without re- 
gard to price. They are easier sharpened 
and repaired than any other self-feeding 
Feed Cutter, will generally cut well from 
three to five years without grinding, 
make a clean, uniform cut, and do not 
clog. All parts of the machines are easi- 
ly and cheaply replaced, and the knives 
and coppers are made so that if they are 
ever broken or worn out, they can, for a 
few cents each, be duplicated and put on 
at home. 6, 8 and 9 aire excellent also 
for Horse Power. 

The Copper does not dull the Knives and 
is durable. 





Number 


Length of 


Length of Cat. 


Weight of 


Weight of 


Will Cut 


Price of 




of 




Balanced heel 


Machine. 


Per Hour. 


Machine, 


Machine. 


Knives. 


Inches. 




Pounds. 


Complete. 
62 lbs. 


Pounds. 


Complete. 


o 


3 


6 


K and IK 


14 


130 


$ 9 oo 


o^ 


3 


6 


X and \% 


22 


70 lbs. 


140 


10 00 


A 


1 


8 


1% 


42 


99 lbs. 


200 


11 00 


1 


3 


6 


K and 1% 


22 


77 lbs. 


ISO 


11 00 


2 


3 


6 


K and W A 


34 


85 lbs. 


180 


12 00 


2^ 
3 


2 


7 


154 and 2J£ 


42 


117 lbs. 


260 


15 00 


3 


6 


1% and IK 


42 


109 lbs. 


215 


14 00 


4 


3 


7 


K and IK 


43 


112 lbs. 


210 


15 00 




3 


7 


IK and IK 


52 


l:;n lbs. 


330 


16 00 


5% 

6 


2 


10 


IK and 2% 


62 


1 16 ll.s. 


400 


18 00 


3 


8 


\% andl-K 


62 


140 lbs. 


390 


20 00 


8 


3 


10 


VA and 2 


80 


207 lbs. 


412 


30 00 


9 


3 


12 


1 V-A and 2 


80 


225 ll.s. 


600 


35 00 



The capacity per hour in the previous table is when turned by one man at moderate speed. 
From three to five pounds of cut feed will make a bushel. 



THE NEW YORK PLOW CO., 55 BEEKMAN ST. 



83 




SOUTHERN SEED CORN, 

Recommended for Ensilage. 
This corn makes abundance of foliage and is very sweet. It does not mature 
the grain in the Northern States, but reaches full height and tassels. We furnish it 
by the bushel, without any fancy price, according to the market. 



84 



THE NEW YORK PLOW CO., 55 BEEKMAN ST. 




